Nightmare Alley

probably need to like self-admit is that it just hit at the right time for me you know i just read it at the i read i read geek love like late high school uh and then have revisited it over the years many times i i in preparation for doing the book i reread it um but i that was probably the fifth time i've read it something like that um i'm not the best at keeping track of that but definitely multiple successions of rereads and i think the you know when i first read it it's sort of experientially different reading it now versus reading it at like 17 versus at 22 versus at 28 it's just like you know different i think i've gotten something different out of it every time but when it hit initially it was just so I'd never read anything like it.

I'm now more aware of other literature in that realm, especially specifically the kind of, you know, other works that deal with like freak shows and that world like Nightmare Alley is obviously one of the other great examples.

Joe Lansdale has a book called Freezer Burn that's also set in that kind of world.

And having never really interacted with that stuff in a kind of fictional through a fictional lens, much less obviously of somebody who's such like a. just incredible writer her work is so sharp and strange and poetic and beautiful and sad um and like everything that book like encapsulates every part of being human uh in a way that's never overly sentimental but also isn't cynical this is very human i don't know um yeah it's that book really does feel like the human condition the book um in all of our like grotesqueries and failures and hopes.