{"id":89,"date":"2004-01-01T23:40:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-01T23:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=89"},"modified":"2004-01-01T23:40:00","modified_gmt":"2004-01-01T23:40:00","slug":"89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Nightmare Alley<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last November, Jim Lewis, the editor of Syzygy<\/em>, the journal of new religious movements, tipped me off about William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 crime novel Nightmare Alley<\/em>. He suggested that this book about “carny” life–with its attitude that most people are marks, rubes, sheep and that all religions are tricks and con jobs, held the blueprint for Anton LaVey’s creation of the Church of Satan<\/a> twenty years later. <\/p>\n

The relationship might be analogous to the way that the Church of All Worlds<\/a> was based on Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land<\/em> — terminology, polyamory, and all (except for Martians).<\/p>\n

Gresham’s books are apparently “collectible,” and the cheapest way that I found to buy the book, after cruising Advanced Book Exchange<\/a>, was to order a discounted copy of Crime Novels<\/em>, an anthology of noir-ish ficition, from Powell’s Books online<\/a>. Nightmare Alley<\/em> is included, along with The Postman Always Rings Twice<\/em> and other classics.<\/p>\n

Now for the truly strange part: he and his second wife, the poet Joy Davidman, became strongly interested in the writing of C.S. Lewis<\/a> in the 1940s. They broke up in 1954; she went to England and later married C.S. Lewis herself. <\/p>\n

L. Ron Hubbard comes into the picture too, but I think that’s enough weirdness for now.<\/p>\n

(That makes two posts in a row using the word “noir.” What’s going on? I don’t plan these things.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nightmare Alley Last November, Jim Lewis, the editor of Syzygy, the journal of new religious movements, tipped me off about William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 crime novel Nightmare Alley. He suggested that this book about “carny” life–with its attitude that most people are marks, rubes, sheep and that all religions are tricks and con jobs, held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-89","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":102,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=102","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":0},"title":"Some Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"While I wait for some uploading issues to be sorted out, here are follow-ups to two recent posts. First, I mentioned on January 1 the book Nightmare Alley as possibly inspiring or prefiguring Anton LaVey's Church of Satan in the 1960s. I have now read Nightmare Alley, and the short\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8366","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":1},"title":"Thinking How the Tarot Smuggled Paganism to the Present","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my twenties, the Tarot was about the most \"occult\" thing around that I could bring out in public settings. I learned to read the cards semi-competently and had some adventures thereby. When I made it through an evening of reading for casual strangers in a nightclub, I figured that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0715645722","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=999","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":2},"title":"Time Warped in Taos","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A slow day today: a couple of hours at the Wired coffeehouse in Taos, N.M., a visit to the art gallery where a friend was \"working\" on a slow Easter Sunday (in other words, M. and I were the only people to drop by) and continued reading of Stephen Oppenheimer's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":545,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=545","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":3},"title":"Witchy WomanMarin County, Calif., Witch\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchy WomanMarin County, Calif., Witch and writer Macha NightMare sits down for a friendly chat with a reporter.Whatever else one might expect from having coffee with a world-famous practicing witch, one can\u2019t come away from a meeting with Macha NightMare without being certain of one thing: She\u2019s quite religious. Not\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":642,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=642","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":4},"title":"Why Men Really Hate Going\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Why Men Really Hate Going to ChurchWMHGTC, by Alaska TV writer David Murrow, is the umpteenth try to understand the \"feminization\" of American Christianity, The pro baseball player-turned-preacher Billy Sunday (1862-1935) was just one manly man who fought the same fight.Murrow is a little shaky on pre-Reformation church history: he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":723,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=723","url_meta":{"origin":89,"position":5},"title":"A temple tour of California","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been reading Erik Davis's fantastic (in all senses of the world) book The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape, illustrated with lucious photos by Michael Rauner.You can read an excerpt on Davis's Web site.I know just few of the Bay Area places, such as the San\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}