William Lindsay Gresham is, most famously, the author of Nightmare Alley (1946), his first novel and first book, whose shadow he was never quite able to escape. Monster Midway is a mostly interesting and entertaining read, offering a glimpse behind the scenes at a type of carnival which used to be more common even thirty years ago, but which has now come to seem almost as exotic to Americans as the Carnival at Rio de Janeiro. There are various carny terms (including "carny" itself, which can refer to either a carnival or a carnival worker), most of which are listed in a short glossary at the front of the book, but the real points of interest to fans of Nightmare Alley are the introductory and seventh chapters: the former of which explains Gresham's first exposure to the term "geek" and a bit of his thought processes in developing Nightmare Alley, while the latter is kind of a graduate course in some of the mind-reading and fortune-telling shenanigans that take place in NA since it deals with the Romany who traditionally practiced them (Chapter 7 is called "The Romany Trade"). The chapters on escape artists and illusionists are very interesting too, while the chapter on freaks just barely manages to avoid being overly treacly. The various other chapters' appeal will depend on how interested the reader is in the topics they cover (hell driving, waxworks, sword swallowing, "games of chance," amusement park rides, etc., etc.).

Gresham's first wife, poet Joy Davidman, left Gresham for C.S. Lewis; one of their sons, Douglas Gresham, currently controls the Lewis estate and the Narnia empire, while the other son, David, reportedly lives in India, a convert to Judaism. William Lindsay Gresham, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, committed suicide in a hotel room in New York City on 14 September 1962 after having been diagnosed with cancer. The only novel he ever published besides Nightmare Alley was Limbo Tower (1946), a mostly failed attempt at memorializing a young friend of his, set in a tuberculosis ward before the discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic capable of effectively treating TB. (My review of Limbo Tower may be read at: http://uvula-fr-b4.livejournal.com/17284.html#cutid1.) ( )