not so much a lyrical novel as a restrictedrnepic. The world of the carnival is presentedrnas a trope, an image of society, notrnunlike the Pequod. Stanton Carlislernlearns “the secret” of deception and manipuladonrnand goes from being a lowlyrnhuckster to a classy con man. Nothing isrnbetter than the “Reverend” Carlisle’srnspurious sanctimony as he bilks the pigeonsrnwhom he deceives with phonyrnseances. Stan Carlisle crashes becausernhe runs into a deceiver more ruthlessrnthan he, and winds up as the lowest ofrnthe low: a geek who bites the heads offrnchickens at a carny. Nightmare Alley isrnremarkable for its range, its Tarot cardrnsymbolism, and its elaboration of the imagernof the magus as the ultimate conrnman —an image indeed of all kinds ofrnmystification, including religion, advertising,rnbig business, and society in general.rnThe self-possessed Stan is inside arnmess of anxiety. The novel is Freudianrnas well as Marxist, and a tour-de-force ofrnsleaze. Its strength is its bid for GreatrnAmerican Novel status. Its weakness isrnprobably some failures of language orrnhasty execution. Even so. Nightmare Alleyrnis an infernal tour of evil with grimrnnational implications for its time and forrntoday. As a feat of writing, this novel, likernthe others, must make us wonder wherernthis kind of gutsy engagement went tornwhen it disappeared from the publishingrnscene.rnThe case of Cornell Woolrich mustrnalso give us pause. In his eccentricity—rnhe was a ‘irtual writing machine whornlived with his iriother in a hotel in NewrnYork City for 25 years—he offers as indeliblernan image of the American writerrnas Edgar Allan Poe or Emily Dickinson.rnWoolrich, a.k.a. William Irish andrnGeorge Hopley, was a fountain of materialrnfor pulp magazines, paperback originals,rnfilm, and television. He was not sornmuch a gifted writer as something else—rna tormented wordspinner with a flair forrnmelodrama. I Married a Dead Manrn(1948), filmed as No Man of Her Own,rnhad its genesis in a story, “They Call MernPatrice,” originallv published in Today’srnWoman (April 1946). The provenancernexplains something about the cornballrnprose and hysterical atmosphere, thernMary Roberts Rinehart “Had I butrnknown!” qualities, but does not explainrnwhy this meretricious exercise should bernso compelling. Woolrich does indeedrnrise to a kind of poetry in the suffocatingrntale of impersonation and murder. ThernGreeks have their Homer, we have this:rn”Life was such a crazy thing, life wasrnsuch a freak. A man was dead. A lovernwas blasted into nothingness. But arncigarette still sent up smoke in a dish.rnAnd an ice cube still hovered unmeltedrnin a highball glass. The things you wantedrnto last, they didn’t; the things it didn’trnmatter about, they hung on forever.”rnVolume two, American Noir of thern1950’s, is not nearly as compellingrnor compulsory as the first volume. Thernpresence of Jim Thompson’s The KillerrnInside Me (1952) must nevertheless bernnoted. This first person narrative fromrnbeyond the grave (like Cain’s) is a triprnthrough the hellish mind of a sociopathrnor paranoid schizophrenic who has diagnosedrnhis own childhood trauma. Disguisedrnas a cliche-spouting deput)’ sheriffrnin a Texas town, the lethally deceptivernkiller grabs the reader by the lapels andrnwon’t let go. He knows it, too.rnIn lots of books I read, the writerrnseems to go haywire every time hernreaches a high point. He’ll startrnleaving out punctuation and runningrnhis words together and babblernabout stars flashing and sinking intorna deep, dreamless sea. And yourncan’t figure out whether the hero’srnlaying his girl or a cornerstone. Irnguess that kind of crap is supposedrnto be pretty deep stuff—a lot of thernbook reviewers eat it up, I notice.rnBut the way I see it is, the writer isrntoo goddamm lazy to do his job.rnAnd I’m not lazy, whatever else Irnam. I’ll tell you everything.rnA killer itself, written in four weeks as arnpaperback original, The Killer Inside Mernis by far the finest work in the second volume.rnPatricia Highsmith’s The TalentedrnMr. Ripley (1955) was the basis for a finernfilm, Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, inrnwhich the sociopathic chameleon andrnkiller gets his at the end. But the point ofrnHighsmith’s book is that the talentedrnTom Ripley gets away with everything.rnOn the prowl in Europe, this Americanrnis far from innocent as he lies, and forges,rnand impersonates, and kills. I noticed atrnthe beginning that Ripley had beenrnasked by the parents of a weak Americanrnartist to persuade their son to come homernfrom Italy, and thought of the similarityrnto the initial situation of James’s The Ambassadors.rnSure enough, as Ripley sailsrnfor Europe, a James novel is recommendedrnto him (Chapter Three) and isrnthen specified (Chapter Six) as The Ambassadors.rnHighsmith’s witty reversal ofrnJames’s international theme was in somernway related to her own life as an expatriaternwriter in Europe.rnThe theme of the artist is repeated inrnCharles Willeford’s Pick-up (1955) andrnDavid Goodis’s Down There (1956),rnthough in neither case is it convincinglyrndisplayed. I don’t find that these novelsrnare written on a plane comparable tornthose I have cited. And Chester Hines’rnThe Real Cool Killers (1959) seems to mernto be pulp fiction without redeeming elements.rnTelegraphic one-sentence paragraphsrndo not a discourse make, or atrnleast not here. We may note, however,rnthat Chester Hines actually served timernfor armed robbery.rnSo what do we have besides a lot of terrificrnbooks to read? Behind the literaryrnconsiderations, there is much. It is chasteningrnto read in these authors’ backgroundsrnof broken homes and divorces,rnalcoholism, political radicalism, and—rnin at least two cases—sexual deviation. Ifrnthat changes our cozy image of what arnwriter is, so much the better. In terms ofrnthe myth behind the tales, the overarchingrntheme is a perception of the socialrnlie, the fraud of bourgeois propriety thatrnmasks a monstrosity of manipulation,rnlust, and violence. Cain’s Cora Papadakisrnwanted middle-class respectability.rnHighsmith’s Tom Ripley succeededrnin becoming an elegant, continentalrngentleman. Cresham’s Stan Carlisle becamerna pious spiritualist who preyed uponrnthe guilt of the wealthy. It is not arnpretty picture of America, but neither is itrna false one. The shamelessness of politicians,rnlawyers, and corporate leaders, inrninverse relation to their sanctimony, isrnenough to provoke —if not to justify—rnany response you care to mention. Thernworst would be to become not a criminalrnbut a sleek fraud who uses the veneer ofrncivility to hide an irresponsible depravity.rnShakespeare and Dickens, those popularrnauthors, knew that very well. So do Hollywood,rnMadison Avenue, and, deeprndown, the White House.rnCain and McCoy and Anderson andrnGresham and others have not only writtenrnbetter than many “respectable” middle-rnbrow novelists (and many pain-inthe-rnneck highbrows as well), but theyrnhave shown more about our national psychologyrnand sociology. Such unpleasantrntruths are actually a ground for recoveryrn—homeopathic medicines that are,rnfinally, wholesome. <6>rnMAY 1998/33rnrnrn