 12 Nov 2005 @ 00:00, by Uncle Remus
Ed: "I hate to tell you this Dr., but there aren't any fish in that river. In fact, there isn't any river."
Dr. Lao: "That's ok. Me no use bait."
"Tomorrow will be like today, and day after tomorrow will be like the day before yesterday," said Apollonius. "I see your remaining days each as quiet, tedious collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You will think no new thoughts. You will experience no new passions. Older you will become but not wiser. Stiffer but not more dignified. Childless you are, and childless you shall remain. Of that suppleness you once commanded in your youth, of that strange simplicity which once attracted a few men to you, neither endures, nor shall you recapture any of them any more. People will talk to you and visit with you out of sentiment or pity, not because you have anything to offer them. Have you ever seen an old cornstalk turning brown, dying, but refusing to fall over, upon which stray birds alight now and then, hardly remarking what it is they perch on? That is you. I cannot fathom your place in life's economy. A living thing should either create or destroy according to its capacity and caprice, but you, you do neither. You only live on dreaming of the nice things you would like to have happen to you but which never happen; and you wonder vaguely why the young lives about you which you occasionally chide for a fancied impropriety never listen to you and seem to flee at your approach. When you die you will be buried and forgotten, and that is all. The morticians will enclose you in a worm-proof casket, thus sealing even unto eternity the clay of your uselessness. And for all the good or evil, creation or destruction, that your living might have accomplished, you might just as well have never lived at all. I cannot see the purpose in such a life. I can see in it only vulgar, shocking waste."
"I thought you said you didn't evaluate lives," snapped Mrs. Cassan.
"I'm not evaluating; I'm only wondering. Now you dream of an oil well to be found on twenty acres of land you own in New Mexico. There is no oil there. You dream of some tall, dark, handsome man to come wooing you. There is no man coming, dark, tall, or otherwise. And yet you will dream on in spite of all I tell you; dream on through your little round of hours, sewing and rocking and gossiping and dreaming; and the world spins and spins and spins. Children are born, grow up, accomplish, sicken, and die; you sit and rock and sew and gossip and live on. And you have a voice in the government, and enough people voting the same way you vote could change the face of the world. There is something terrible in that thought. But your individual opinion on any subject in the world is absolutely worthless. No, I cannot fathom the reason for your existence."
"I didn't pay you to fathom me. Just tell me my future and let it go at that."
I have been telling you your future! Why don't you listen? Do you want to know how many more times you will eat lettuce or boiled eggs? Shall I enumerate the instances you will yell good-morning to your neighbor across the fence? Must I tell you how many more times you will buy stockings, attend church, go to moving picture shows? Shall I make a list showing how many more gallons of water in the future you will boil making tea, how many more combinations of cards will fall to you at auction bridge, how often the telephone will ring in your remaining years? Do you want to know how many more times you will scold the paper-carrier for not leaving your copy in the spot that irks you the least? Must I tell you how many more times you will become annoyed at the weather because it rains of fails to rain according to your wishes? Shall I compute the pounds of pennies you will save shopping at bargain centers? Do you want to know all that? For that is your future, doing the same small futile things you have done for the last fifty-eight years. You face a repetition of your past, a recapitulation of the digits in the adding machine of your days.
---- The Circus of Dr. Lao, Charles G. Finney, 1935.
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Aaah, the Circus of Dr. Lao...Apollonius, Merlin, a chimera, a medusa, a unicorn, a sphinx, a satyr, a sea serpent, even Satan and the Great God Yottle, where else could you find such an odd assemblage of unusual characters and exotic creatures from all places and time?
The Circus of Dr. Lao was made into a major motion picture in 1960 as the "Seven Faces of Dr. Lao"
A couple of reviews I like:
The movie is about a mysterious guy, Dr. Lao, who shows up at a bleak Arizona town and transforms its inhabitants with magic. The book, on the other hand, is about this mysterious guy, Dr. Lao, who shows up at a bleak Arizona town and doesn't change anything.
----Ian Shoales
The book is not about plot, not in the traditional sense----climaxes are interrupted and desires left unconsummated, as when the satyr awakens the desires of a prudish schoolteacher. Most people are unchanged (with the exception, perhaps, of the one who gets turned to stone) and remain impudent, deceitful, and deceived. We are not privileged to judge what effect the wonders of the circus have on the town of Abalone. Finney does not allow for a moral analysis during the story and stops short of resolution.
---- Mike Simanoff
Famous quote:
"The world is a circus if you look at it the right way. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust but mystery, a marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think, "I'm alive. And being alive is fantastic." Every time such a thing happens, you are part of the circus of Dr. Lao..."
B-Movie Central gave the movie 5 bees (the maximum rating) with the following recommendation: "If my ratings system went to 'Six Bees' this movie would get six bees. It's just that good. If you've never seen this movie, then go right now, buy it, and watch it ASAP. If you have seen it, then you know what I'm talking about and you really need to go watch it again."
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