The Circus of Dr. Lao

The Circus of Dr. Lao

Charles G. Finney (1935)

(Version 1.1)

(Front Cover: Gaza 1979)

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Charles G. Finney (December 1, 1905 – April 16, 1984) was an American fantasy novelist and newspaperman. His full name was Charles Grandison Finney, evidently after his great-grandfather, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney. His first novel and most famous work, The Circus of Dr. Lao won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1935.

Finney was born in Sedalia, Missouri and served in China with the United States Army's 15th Infantry Regiment (E Company), 1927–1929. In his memoirs, he notes that The Circus of Dr. Lao was conceived in Tientsin in 1929. After the Army, he worked for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona, 1930–1970, as an editor.

Some of Finney's papers, with correspondence and photographs, are collected at the University of Arizona Main Library Special Collections, Collection Number: AZ 024, Papers of Charles G. Finney, 1959-1966. The archive includes typed manuscripts of "A Sermon at Casa Grande", "Isabelle the Inscrutable", "Murder with Feathers", ""The Night Crawler", "Private Prince", "An Anabasis in Minor Key", "The Old China Hands", and "The Ghosts of Manacle".

Finney's work, especially The Circus of Dr. Lao, has been highly influential on subsequent writers of fantasy. Ray Bradbury admired the novel and anthologised it in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes shares with Dr. Lao the setting of a supernatural circus. Arthur Calder-Marshall's The Fair to Middling (1959), Tom Reamy's Blind Voices (1978),Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (1968) and Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City (2009) were all influenced by Finney's work.

     In the
Abalone
(Arizona)
Morning Tribune
for August third there appeared on page five an advertisement eight columns wide and twenty-one inches long. In type faces grading from small pica to ninety-six point the advertisement told of a circus to be held in Abalone that day, the tents to be spread upon a vacant field on the banks of the Santa Ana River, a bald spot in the city's growth surrounded by all manner of houses and habitations.
     Floridly worded, the advertisement made claims which even Phineas Taylor Barnum might have hedged at advancing. It alleged for the show's female personnel a pulchritude impossible to equal in any golden age of beauty or physical culture. The mind of man could not conceive of women more beautiful than were the charmers of this circus. Though the whole race of man were bred for feminine beauty as the whole race of Jersey cattle is bred for butterfat, even then lovelier women could not be produced than the ones who graced this show. . . . Nay, these were the most beautiful women of the world; the whole world, not just the world of today, but the world since time began and the world as long as time shall run.
     Nor were the wild animals on display at the circus any less sensational than were the girls. Not elephants or tigers or hyenas or monkeys or polar bears or hippopotami; anyone and everyone had seen such as those time after time. The sight of an African lion was as banal today as that of an airplane. But here were animals no man had ever seen before; beasts fierce beyond all dreams of ferocity; serpents cunning beyond all comprehension of guile; hybrids strange beyond all nightmares of fantasy.
     Furthermore, the midway of the circus was replete with sideshows wherein were curious beings of the netherworld on display, macabre trophies of ancient conquests, resurrected supermen of antiquity. No glass-blowers, cigarette fiends, or frogboys, but real honest-to-goodness freaks that had been born of hysterical brains rather than diseased wombs.
     Likewise, the midway would house a fortuneteller. Not an ungrammatical gypsy, not a fat blonde mumbling silly things about dark men in your life, not a turbaned mystic canting of the constellations; no, this fortuneteller would not even be visible to you, much less take your hand and voice generalities concerning your life lines. Anonymous behind the veil of his mystery he would speak to you and tell you of foreordained things which would come into your life as the years unfolded. And you were warned not to enter his tent unless you truly wanted to know the truth about your future, for never under any conditions did he lie about what was going to happen; nor was it possible for you after learning your future to avert in any way its unpleasant features. He absolutely would not, however, forecast anything of an international or political nature. He was perfectly capable of so doing, of course, but the management had found that such prophecies, inasmuch as they were invariably true, had in the past been used to unfair and dishonorable advantage by unscrupulous financiers and politicians: that which had been meant for mankind had been converted to personal gain — which was not ethical.
     And for men only there was a peepshow. It was educational rather than pornographic. It held no promise of hermaphroditic goats or randy pony stallions lusting after women. Nor any rubberstamp striptease act. But out of the erotic dramas and dreams of long-dead times had been culled a figure here, an episode there, a fugitive vision elsewhere, all of which in combination produced an effect that no ordinary man for a long series of days would forget or, for that matter, care to remember too vividly. Because of the unique character of this segment of the circus, attendance would be limited to men over twenty-one, married men preferred; and absolutely no admittance to any man under the influence of liquor.
     In the main tent the circus performance proper, itself diverting beyond description with colorful acts and remarkable scenes, would end with a formidable spectacle. Before your eyes would be erected the long-dead city of Woldercan and the terrible temple of its fearful god Yottle. And before your eyes the ceremony of the living sacrifice to Yottle would be enacted: a virgin would be sanctified and slain to propitiate this deity who had endured before Bel-Marduk even, and was the first and mightiest and least forgiving of all the gods. Eleven thousand people would take part in the spectacle, all of them dressed in the garb of ancient Woldercan. Yottle himself would appear, while his worshipers sang the music of the spheres. Thunder and lightning would attend the ceremonies, and possibly a slight earthquake would be felt. All in all it was the most tremendous thing ever to be staged under canvas.
     Admission 10¢ to the circus grounds proper, 25¢ admission to the big top; children in arms free. l0¢ admission to the sideshows, 50¢ admission to the peepshow. Parade at 11 A.M. Midway open at 2 P.M. Main show starts at 2:45. Evening performance at 8. Come one, come all. The greatest show on earth.

     The first person to notice anything queer about the ad, aside from its outrageous claims, was the proofreader of the
Tribune
checking it for typographical errata the night before it appeared in the paper. An ad was an ad to Mr. Etaoin, the proofreader, a mass of words to be examined for possible error both of omission and commission, manner and matter. And his meticulous, astigmatic, spectacle-bolstered eyes danced over the type of this full-page advertisement, stopping at the discovery of transposition or mis-spelling long enough for his pencil to indicate the trouble on the margin of the proof, then dancing on through the groups of words to the end. After he had read the ad through and corrected what needed correcting, he held it up at arm's length to read over the bigger type again and ascertain whether he had missed anything at the first perusal. And looking at the thing in perspective that way, he discovered that it was anonymous, that it carried on endlessly as to the wonders of the show but never said whose show it was, that never a name appeared anywhere in all that overabundance of description.
     "Something's screwy," reflected Mr. Etaoin. And he took the ad copy to the
Tribune
advertising manager for counsel and advice.
     "Look here," he said to that gentleman, "here's a whole page of hooey about some circus and not a word as to whose circus it is. Is that O.K.? Is that the way it's supposed to run in the paper? Generally these circus impresarios are hell on having their names smeared all over the place."
     "Let's see," said the ad manager, taking up the copy. "By God, that is funny. Who sold this ad, anyway?"
     "Steele's name's on the ticket," offered the proofreader.
     Advertising Solicitor Steele was summoned.
     "Look here," said the ad manager, "there ain't any name or nothing on this ad. What about that?"
     "Well, sir, I don't know," said Steele vaguely. "A little old Chinaman brought the copy in to me this morning, paid cash for the ad, and said it was to run just exactly the way it was written. He said we could use our judgment about the type face and so on, but the words must be exactly the way he had 'em. I told him O.K. and took the money and the ad, and that's all I know about it. I guess that's the way he wants it, though. He was so insistent we mustn't change anything."
     "Yeah, but doesn't he want his name in there somewhere?" persisted the proofreader.
     "Damn if I know," said Steele.
     "Let it ride just the way it is," ruled the manager. "We got the money. That's the main thing in any business."
     "Sure must be some show," said the proofreader. "Did you guys read this junk?"
     "Nah, I didn't read it," said Steele.
     "I ain't read an ad in ten years," said the manager. "I just look at 'em kinda; I don't read 'em."
     "O.K.," said Mr. Etaoin, "she goes as is then. You're the boss."
     The next person to notice something unusual in the page display was Miss Agnes Birdsong, high-school English teacher. Two words in it bothered her: pornographic and hermaphroditic. She knew what pornography meant, having looked it up after reading a review of Mr. Cabell's
Jurgen
. But hermaphroditic had her at a loss. She thought she suspected she knew what it meant; she detected the shadows of the god and the goddess, but their adjectival marriage left her bewildered. She pondered a little, then reached for her dictionary. A guardian of the language could do no less. The definitions left her wiser but not sadder. She returned to the ad to wonder further what a fugitive vision seen through a peephole would be like. She pondered upon the conjuring up in a stuffy circus tent of an erotic dream of a long-dead day. She wished momentarily she were a man. She thought, and quickly slew the thought, of dressing up like a man and attending that peepshow. "I'll go and see the parade," compromised Miss Agnes Birdsong.

     The children of Plumber Rogers saw the ad while they were searching for the comics. It was a tremendous occasion. A circus in town that very day and they hadn't even known it was coming. A parade in two hours that would pass two blocks from the Rogers' house. Clowns. Elephants. Tigers. Calliopes. Bands. Horses. Fanfare and pomp. The yellow glare of Abalone took on a golden glow for the children of Plumber Rogers, for a circus was in town.
     "Now, don't go getting all excited, you kids," said the plumber uneasily. "I don't know whether you'll get to go or not." (He hadn't had work since the first day of the depression.) "I don't think it'll be much of a circus anyway."
     He took the paper from them and read the ad for himself. . . . Eleven thousand people would take part in the spectacle . . . "Why, that's a goddam lie!" said Plumber Rogers. "There ain't hardly that many people in Abalone."
     "Oh, John," said Mrs. Rogers, shocked; "you oughtn't to talk that way before the children."
     But John wasn't listening. He was reading about the women in the circus.
     "Tell you what; let's go, Sarah," he said. "The kids haven't seen anything for a long time. Maybe something'll turn up in the way of work pretty soon. These hard times can't last much longer."

     At nine o'clock the chief of police read the advertisement. He turned to the desk sergeant. "Say, I didn't know there was going to be a circus in town today. Did you know anything about it?"
     "Naw," said the sergeant. "I don't pay no 'tention to circuses anyway. I ain't been to one since I was a kid. Never did like the damn things a whole hell of a lot anyway."
     The chief phoned the city clerk's office. "Say, about this circus that's advertised in the paper this morning. I didn't know nothing about it till just now I read about it. They got a permit, do you know?"
     He listened awhile. "Yeah . . . yeah . . . no . . . I guess so . . . I don't know . . . yeah . . . no . . . oh, sure . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . no . . . uh huh. Good-by."
     "Well?" said the desk sergeant.
     "The clerk claims an old Chink came in and got a permit for a circus just before quitting time last night. Said the Chink had the owner's written consent to use the vacant lot for the show."
     "Well?" said the desk sergeant.
     "Well, you send a couple of guys out there this afternoon to look the joint over," said the chief. "I guess it's all right, but it seems kind of screwy to me anyway. Did you ever hear of a Chink running a circus before?"
     "Aw, I ain't paid no 'tention to circuses since I was a kid," said the desk sergeant.