William Lindsay Gresham: Nothing Matters In This Goddamned
Lunatic Asylum Of A World But Dough
(from NOIR FICTION: DARK HIGHWAYS by Paul Duncan)
Imagine a world obsessed by the acquisition of money. One man
finds out what you need, preys on this weakness to get money
out of you, and then moves onto bigger and bigger fish. Only,
there are other people like this man. What happens when he
meets someone who preys on his weaknesses?
Nightmare Alley (1946) is the story of Stanton Carlisle. He
begins at the carnival by helping out at the Ten-in-One tent,
giving the geek his chicken. Stan is happy with the shiny
half-dollar in his trouser pocket and plays with it. And then
he gets the idea that he should have more shiny new coins.
And girls. He beds women to get what he wants. He learns the
codes to become a mentalist - the person talking to the
blindfolded mentalist nonchalantly includes code words into
their speech, which identify the necessary objects. Stan
wants to go even further, to aim for bigger stakes, more
affluent marks.
So he decorates a parlour and sets himself up as a
spiritualist - a popular occupation which satisfied the need
of many who wanted to talk to dead sons after the wholesale
slaughter of World War One. With each move up the social
ladder, Stan finds another woman with whom to cohabit
- they give him their confidences, their secrets and he makes
profit out of them. This is the world of the con. The
magicians, the mentalists, the spiritualists and the
psychiatrists are fakes. Only the freaks of nature are real
people. Gresham uses the carnival people as a cross-section
of society. The giant Hercules embodies the lumpen
proletariat who know they are being screwed but do nothing
about it. Major Mosquite is the little bit of pure hate we
keep in our hearts - all talk and no action. Joe Plasky, the
man with no legs, is the man of action. Mary is a passive
woman who allows Stan to abuse her. Zeena, the mistress, is
desire - she is the one who shows Stan that the only way
forward in the world is through deception. And then there is
Dr Lilith Ritter, a woman who shoehorns her way into the
spiritualist racket and takes control of Stan. Together, they
strip society bare.
But every predator in the food chain sooner or later becomes
the prey, which Stan discovers to his cost. It takes him a
much shorter time to slide down than it did to go up. In the
end, Stan ends up as the lowest of the lowlife, the plankton
of the food chain - a geek.
Gresham's only other novel was Limbo Tower (1949) an equally
downbeat work about Asa Kimball and other men slowly dying of
fear, depression, disease and tuberculosis in hospital. He is
well known in magic circles for his biography of Houdini: The
Man Who Walked Through Walls (1959), and his non-fiction book
about freak shows and carnivals, Monster Midway
(1953). Gresham supported himself with a regular flow of
short stories and articles in Ellery Queen's Mystery
Magazine, Esquire and other publications. If there was a book
about carnivals, circuses and freaks that needed reviewing
for the New York Times, Gresham was usually assigned the
job.
*
Born in Baltimore on August 20 1909, William Lindsay Gresham
was the descendant of a family that settled in Maryland in
1641. His father needed to pursue a factory job so the family
moved to New York. On a visit to the freak show at Coney
Island, the young Gresham became fascinated by a
sharply-dressed, suave-looking Italian man, who had a small
headless body hanging out of his stomach. The small body was
also impeccably dressed. Learning that the Italian was
happily married with 5 normal children, Gresham began to envy
him - all Gresham had was a father afraid of losing his job
and a mother always grousing about money.
After jobs as a stenographer and freelance reporter, Gresham
ended up in Greenwich Village singing folk music at a
bohemian nightspot. He met a wealthy woman and married her.
Then in November 1936, like many idealistic young men during
the turbulent 30s he joined the Communist Party, taking the
name William Rafferty. In November 1937, after a close friend
died at Brunete, Gresham went to Spain and fought, with the
Abraham Lincoln Battalion, on the side of the Republicans in
the Spanish Civil War. Gresham was a foot soldier, a
topographer and then a first aider. It was in the latter post
that he met a medic who liked to reminisce about his times in
a carnival. This was Joseph Daniel 'Doc' Halliday, a former
seaman and male nurse. It was from him that Gresham learned
all about the carny culture, the habits, the mentality, the
language. And it was there that he first came across the word
geek. It referred to the lowest of the low - an alcoholic or
drug addict who was out of his head all the time. He could be
prodded, cajoled and led into working for more drink or
drugs. His job? To sit and crawl in his own excrement, as the
wild man of Borneo, and occasionally bite the heads off
chickens and snakes. Immediately, a story idea entered into
Gresham's head, about the rise of a carny conman and his
subsequent descent into geekdom.
When Gresham returned to New York, his marriage collapsed and
ended in divorce. He took to drink and, in despair, attempted
to hang himself in a closet but the hook came loose and he
fell to the ground, gaining consciousness hours later. To
repair his mind, he went to psychoanalysis. To keep his body
occupied, he worked as a salesman, magician, copywriter and
magazine editor. Then he married again, to the writer and
poetess Helen Joy Davidman, by whom he had two sons, David
and Douglas.
With stories and articles being published regularly, Gresham
began work on his novel, hanging out at the Dixie Hotel,
where the carnival workers did their drinking. Gresham
published Nightmare Alley in 1946 and it met with immediate
and large sales success. It also sold to Hollywood for
$60,000 and became a very good Film Noir the following year.
With the proceeds of this success, Gresham moved to a large
estate in Staatsburg, about 75 miles north of New York
City.
While Gresham was writing the equally bleak Limbo Tower
(1949), both Joy and Gresham left the Communist Party and
found religion. They joined the Presbyterian church. Gresham
probably believed he was on the road to a successful career
as a novelist, but that was not to be the case. The funds
began to dry up, resulting in strained arguments between
husband and wife. Another cause of tension was that Gresham
did not believe he should sleep with only one woman. Joy
believed otherwise. Cracking under the pressure, Gresham
began drinking heavily and would fly into rages for little or
no reason. One time he broke a bottle over Douglas' head.
Chairs were regularly broken against the pillars on the front
of the house. Gresham dabbled in Zen, the tarot, Yoga, I
Ching and Dianetics to soothe his personal demons with little
success.
Then in 1952 Joy became very ill and was advised by her
doctor to plan a long vacation. Around this time, Joy's first
cousin, Ren饠Rodriguez, visited Staatsburg to hide herself and
her two children from her abusive husband, Claude Pierce.
(Haunted by his experiences during World War Two, Claude
began to drink, became abusive and treated Ren饠like a slave.)
With someone to look after Gresham, Joy went on vacation, and
left for England in August 1952. Gresham wrote to Joy in
January 1953 saying that he and Ren饠had become lovers. Joy
returned immediately. There were arguments, tears, rages and
finally divorce. Joy sold the house to pay off the Internal
Revenue Service and moved to England with the boys. In 1956,
she married author C S Lewis and died tragically on July 14
1960. Their relationship was the basis of the stage play and
film Shadowlands.
Gresham moved to Florida with Ren饠and they were married in
1954 - Gresham joined Alcoholics Anonymous and seemed to find
some sort of peace. Shortly after Joy's death, Gresham
visited England to see his sons. When it became apparent that
they were well cared for, he left them in C S Lewis' care.
Reflecting on his life, Gresham told a fellow veteran from
Spain, "I sometimes think that if I have any real talent it
is not literary but is a sheer talent for survival. I have
survived three busted marriages, losing my boys, war,
tuberculosis, Marxism, alcoholism, neurosis and years of
freelance writing. Just too mean and ornery to kill, I
guess."
Gresham discovered he had cancer of the tongue. He had no
wish for either he or his family to face a long, ugly death,
so on September 14 1962 he checked into the run-down Dixie
Hotel room, registering as 'Asa Kimball, of Baltimore,' and
took his own life. The only tribute paid to him in the New
York Times came from the bridge columnist.
from NOIR FICTION: DARK HIGHWAYS by Paul Duncan
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