This is a great reissue by Bison Books.First published in 1935, The Circus of Dr. Lao is a marvel: or as John Marco so rightly puts it in his introduction, ‘an obscure classic’. (page xvii)Though Charles Finney published other novels and stories, this (his first) is perhaps his most famous, though even this is not all that well known. Like many others, I suspect, I know it personally through The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao, the George Pal movie of 1964 starring Tony Randall in the titular multitude of roles, though even that is quite hard to get hold of these days.However the book itself is a richer and more complex experience.It tells of a visit to the small town of Abalone in Arizona by a circus. A circus that appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and promises spectacles that are unparalleled by any other touring extravaganza.The book begins in what we would now see as a small-town USA / Stephen King kind of way, as the town’s inhabitants read of the circus through an advertisement placed mysteriously in the town’s newspaper. The book shows us the effects of the circus on various members of the Abalone community, amongst them the newspaper printer and copy editor, a local schoolteacher, the children of the town and a down-and-out (this was the time of the Great Depression) recently discharged from the Army, amongst others.Promising wonders never before seen, the circus actually reveals to the townspeople the mythical made real, their future, and their hopes and fears realised before disappearing again. There is a sea serpent, a roc, a Medusa, a werewolf, and even an ancient God. Whilst holding up a mirror to the good and bad that 1930’s society can bring, it is also moralistic, with an ending that matches the eeriness of the main plot. Some of the language is Bradbury-poetic, lyrical and obscure. It’s not every day that you read the word ‘pulchritude’, even less so on the first page of the novel. It is also deliberately ambiguous in its plot, a book that doesn’t explain everything and doesn’t finish with an ending that ties everything up, though it is apt. It even poses some questions at the end not answered in the book! In terms of plot, well, it’s rather nebulous. You could cut it to ‘weird circus arrives, people see the exhibits, then circus leaves’, but there’s so much more than that. What we have is a series of experiences that the inhabitants are affected by. It is a book that, though short, is worth savouring and then re-reading.It is also much more adult than I remember the film being. There are comments on pornography and the erotic, which are perhaps more explicit, though tame by today’s standards.There are other elements that have dated less well: for example, Doctor Lao is often referred to as ‘a Chink’, which may settle uneasily on today’s more sophisticated reader. Nevertheless, as an indicator of the time, and language used then, if not now, I was able to work with it, feeling that the term reflected a small-town mentality exhibited in the book.Unlike other more recent editions, the Bison Second Edition has been published with its original first volume illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff, which are odd, but totally in tune with the surreal aspects of the book.There are no chapters but appropriate gaps in the text where necessary. The last twenty-five pages or so are called ‘The Catalogue’ – a dictionary list of the humans, the animals the icons, the foodstuffs and the places visited in the Circus. Totally unnecessary, yet somehow suitable for the book.Weird, unusual and sadly affecting, this book gave me that Bradbury-esque feeling of sense of wonder, that sense of innocence and the fact that just ‘to believe’ is sometimes enough. Partly religious allegory, perhaps, partly satire, it is a book most definitely worth reading. I found it more than I was expecting – imaginative, bizarre, creepy, amusing, charming, quaint, and oddly unsettling.If you think of Fantasy as being predominantly Sword and Sorcery or Tolkienesque, then this might broaden your perspective. For a book out on the limits, even seventy-five years on, and if you want to push your sense of what is Fantasy reading, then this is a must.
I have a fondness for the people of the sleepy little town of Abalone, Arizona. I too live in a small desert town. It's not in Arizona but it is a stone's throw away on the other side of the Colorado River. I wouldn't call it sleepy since it is on the I-10, one of the busiest interstates in the nation. Yet it does occasionally seem like it is on the verge of lapsing into a coma. We even have a circus that comes into town twice a year. It has a not-so-big-top tent, an asthmatic ringmaster and an acrobat who falls a lot. But at least it's a circus. So I can identify with the people of Abalone, Arizona when The Circus of Dr. Lao arrives to their town. Dr. Lao's one day extravaganza exhibits mythological creatures of wonder. They have a magician that really does magic and a seer who really tells the future, which of course is usually depressing. I can understand how the residents struggle with their beliefs and skepticism, some learning but most going on with their illusions. But I would give a year of my life for one day with the circus of Dr. Lao where small town reality is given a kick in the groin and fantasy interrupts monotony.Finney's under-appreciated fantasy novel has no real plot. It chronicles a day the circus comes into town. Yet the author weaves a fantastical story that is bolstered by Dr. Lao's wonderful descriptions of his creatures that is party traditional mythology and party Lao's own fabrication. The tension, and delight, of the story comes in the town resident's own reactions which runs the gamut from disbelief to unrealistic optimism. This is one of the books you read for the language. It is somewhere between Bradbury and Beagle in style although it would be more accurate to say Bradbury and Beagle takes their style from Finney as this book was published in 1935. It is also surprisingly racy for its time especially considering that the words "pornographic" and "hermaphroditic" appear by the second page. Unlike what those who saw the movie 7 faces of Dr. Lao may assume, this is not a children's book. But it is a witty and sometimes surrealist look at human nature and what happens when complacency is challenged.
What do You think about The Circus Of Dr. Lao (2002)?
Somewhat mixed feelings about this book. I became interested due to the film with Tony Randall, which keeps the book's dark humor while adding on a layer of optimism and sentimentality. However, this layer is completely absent from the book. Instead, one feels the palpable cynicism and hatred for humanity and God of a military and newspaper man who obviously witnessed more than his fair share of suffering and inhumanity.The cynicism does not always feel unwarranted, nor does the bitter but humorous style of much of the book fail to be entertaining. It vacilates between being a sardonic delight and a heavy (and even heavy-handed) piece of short literature that has to be digested in multiple sittings.The author, himself the grandson and namesake of the great evangelist and abolitionist Charles Finney, if he believes in a God, seems to find Him distant, petty, and hateful. One begins to wonder why the circus seems to provide such fodder for this kind of nihilism (as in Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and Anton LaVey's biographical details), and perhaps it's because it puts on display those things that we think of as deserving to be hidden where we must face them and despair. The Circus of Dr. Lao puts God through a theodicy trial that Finney doesn't seem to think the Deity survives, but Finney's nihilism is hardly a palatable alternative.Funny at times, interesting often, and very well-written, the life-as-a-meaningless-freakshow motif still sullies what this book could be. An interesting counterpoint to the film, but on the whole I still much prefer the cinematic rendering.
—Cody
THE. MOST. UNSETTLING. THING. I. HAVE. EVER. READ. As if in coda to my completion, a painter brought into my folks' decorating store a dead hummingbird he found in the back of his van. He brought it forward like an acolyte bearing the thin weight of his aged master, forward toward a raised dais, laying it down, then prostrating himself in supplication. The painter said to me, lying the stiff, inert carcass upon my desk, "I thought you could give it a good burial. I...I...I just don't know how it got in there..."And so a soul was claimed. This book is a monster. It is a monster for the mirror it shines upon us all: our humanity, and our vein attempts to circumvent it. It begins calmly enough, an advert placed in the Abalone, Arizona newspaper, announcing the circus of Dr. Lao was on its way. But no one saw it on the roads. And no one saw it on the rails. We meet a scattering of characters, all used ingeniously by Mr. Finney for what they bring to his plot. These characters he sets in motion, automatons in Dr. Lao's diabolical scheme. From page one, the reader is aware of what to expect, for it is spelled out in the curving letters that slither through Mr. Lao's advert. We simply sit back, and feel the weight of suspense as it presses down upon our chests. The weight lifts, and you feel giddy. You're standing in a warm green pasture, rolling fields in the distance. The sun shines bright above your head, warming your shoulders. Clover peoples the grass, spores float on the breeze. A butterfly, yellow, diaphanous wings, dips, swirls around your head, kisses your nose with its scratchy lepidoptera legs. You're at peace. Calm. You feel you know your place in the world, are at one with it. You see a spark in the sky. Very tiny at first, and then it grows, expands, contorts. It is silver and it catches the sun. Glints. You hear the whine of a motor, a clunking, sputtering sound. As the glint falls, the noise rises, shivering your arms, causing the tiny hairs to stand on end. Your skin warps, thins. The sound is deafening. You feel a pulse inside your head, your eardrums beat an irregular rhythm, your legs quiver and you fall. Your arms are above your head the the weight of this object that is falling, falling, flames, you see as you look up are licking out, tasting the fragile air. Palms pressed against your ears, you huddle into a fetal position, close your eyes, and wait for the silence that will come.
—Mark
WTF was that all about? I thought this was going to be scary or macabre but what I got was satire. This is more Sinclair Lewis (reminded me of “Main Street” in the way it skewered the right and proper townsfolk). However, it was never actually humorous either. There is some striking prose, and a great use of metaphor. The writer is gifted with an acerbic and lacerating wit. Many individual elements are brilliant, but mixed together they fail to coalesce and the end result read like a hodgepodge of ideas; and then it abruptly ends. And beware ye readers of delicate sensibilities for this material is not “politically correct” and features harsh language and gross stereotypes of ethnic groups.
—Ivan
