So, I finished Charles G Finney's The Unholy City. It was a pretty short read, only around 120 pages, and I have to say I think I liked it more than his much better-known novella The Circus of Dr. Lao, which I also liked quite a lot. Though both are clearly written by the same man and share his odd sense of humor, the two books are quite different in execution; while Circus is set in a realistic version of Abalone, Arizona, and depicts the reactions of its everyday residents to the fantastic and magical traveling circus as it visits Abalone, The Unholy City is the exact reverse. Captain Malahide, resident of Abalone, sets out on a round-the-world trip, only for his plane to crash in a strange place, leaving him as the only survivor. He immediately loots the wreckage and finds himself in possession of a sizable sum of money, though practically nothing else. Soon after departing the crash site he comes upon a native, the loquacious Vicq Ruiz, who joins Malahide on his journey (once Ruiz realizes Malahide has a lot of money) with the intention of showing him around Heilar-wey, the titular city.
The city itself is not some fantastical fairy-city, however; it is essentially a bizarre parody of a modern metropolis, providing ample opportunity for Finney to mock various aspects of society. However, as with Circus, his parody is complex, but while in that book it was subtle, gentle even, here it is much more biting. One of the most powerful sequences is when Malahide and Ruiz sit in on a trial where a black man stands accused of murder; Finney initially describes him using exaggeratedly racist terminology ("paws" for hands, etc.), but when the man opens his mouth to testify he describes the events in question using the most poetic, vivid language possible, directly contradicting the initial impression of him as a big dumb brute (or Finney as a racist). Both attorneys continually interrupt with objections of the most irrelevant sort, while the judge struggles to stay awake. The sequence was certainly more relevant when it was written in the 1930s (lynching was still fairly common then), but I still found it quite tragic and darkly humorous at the same time. It's easy for some to claim that racism has been stamped out, and that railing against it is beating a dead horse and preaching to the choir; ignoring that how thoroughly it's actually been stamped out is subject to debate, it's nonetheless important to regularly familiarize ourselves with the worst aspects of society. That way we can learn to recognize and deal with them when they crop up in other forms (and believe me, in America we don't have to look very far to find them). Make no mistake, the claim that racism (or sexism, or any other form of discrimination) doesn't exist anymore is a victory for racism.
Still, things are usually lighter in tone, showcasing a really bizarre but also dark sense of humor, similar to RA Lafferty but lighter on the zany and heavier on the irony. While in Circus Finney kept his humor tightly reined in, here he really lets it run free. The Unholy City is just a hell of a lot of fun to read, despite being rather depressing overall. Malahide and Ruiz stumble through the surreal Heilar-wey in a seemingly eternal evening, drinking bottle after bottle of cheap liquor in bar after bar, and buying newspaper after newspaper without ever sleeping. They're nominally bent on striving toward the zenith of human happiness, as Ruiz has a premonition that he will soon die, but happiness seems forever out of reach. Meanwhile, various events are unfolding across the city, followed by the protagonists through radio and newspaper and rumor; civil war erupts as various social factions strive for dominance, and a giant tiger rampages throughout the city, characterized by Ruiz as "the wrath of God" (this despite the fact that he worships the Greek pantheon). There's all manner of weird symbolism of that sort, some of which Finney spells out explicitly, but with more of a sad shrug than a knowing wink.
In sum I would rate The Unholy City very highly; it tackles social issues with biting satire but in a complex enough manner that it never comes across as preachy or simplistic and it's often hard to determine what exactly Finney's position even is, if position he has at all. The protagonist claims to be a neutral observer in Heilar-wey who does not take sides and does not judge (to the disgust of nearly everyone), and that's most likely Finney's position as well. The edition I have includes Finney's The Magician of Manchuria, so that's what I'll be reading next.
Also, as a side note, don't confuse Charles G Finney the author with Charles G Finney the evangelist, as the latter's works seem to come up in book searches as often as the former's.
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