Blame it on Larry Nolen: he started it all in his blog:
During this work week (October 13-17), there will be several bloggers posting their thoughts regarding Thomas Disch's 1968 novel, Camp Concentration. As I am made aware of these reviews, I'm going to edit this post, which will serve as a link depot for these reviews. Others participating in this first Blogger Book Club discussion are encouraged to click on these links and leave comments/questions for the person who reviewed the book. If you are reading this and didn't know about the Disch discussion but have questions/comments to make, feel free to make them here or on the others' blogs. My review (along with my planned comments on the others' blogs) will be up sometime in the late morning/early afternoon CDT.
For this first Blogger Book Club (it´s a great idea - how come nobody had thought of it before??) joint review, Larry chose five books and posted a poll in his blog so we could all vote. Fortunately my favorite of the lot won: Thomas M. Disch´s Camp Concentration is one of my all-time favorites SF books ever.
Written at the height of we would call the New Wave movement, Camp Concentration still resonates strongly today - specially in a world at war(s), globally speaking, and, in the case of the U.S., the Republican candidate (and his vice in particular) seems to be pledging for guns, war and exhaustion of natural resources, the world is becoming more and more a dystopia - the way Disch foresaw even before the cyberpunks.
Camp Concentration is the story of poet Louis Sachetti, imprisoned for draft resistance during the war America has declared on the rest of the world. The book is dedicated to John Sladek and Thomas Mann. It is easy for us, in a first moment, see why the homage to Sladek, being a fellow of him and one of the best voices of his generation (another voice gone early, and who never got in life the proper recognition he should, by the way). Mann, though, is not there just for name-dropping (as a clueless reader who have never read Disch could think): one just has to remind of one of Mann´s masterpieces, The Magic Mountain, and compare Sachetti to Hans Castorp (even though the comparison is only being made here by means of analogy, of course). The sorrows of young Castorp, however, seem today very mild if compared to all the suffering of Disch´s stalwart poet.
Sachetti is an obvious reference to two Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, a point that China Miéville also used recently in Perdido Street Station). And, also as his namesakes, he is sort of convicted by false pretenses (or true pretenses in a puppet-state, which makes them false anyway) and arrested. First to a common prison, but then, in the middle of the night he is drugged and wakes in a maximum-security facility, Camp Archimedes.
References abound in the first half of the book. Louis Sachetti is a very educated man, and he wants to make sure that any possible reader of his journals is aware of that. From Dr. Johnson to Norbert Wiener, mentioning and quoting Buddha, Rilke, Genet, Machiavelli and a plethora of some of the best mankind offer in Religion, Philosophy, Cybernetics, Literature - knowledge, after all. Sachetti is co-opted by his jailers (specially by General Haast, whom with he starts developing a very dangerous relationship, bordering Stockholm Syndrome), to write a daily record of the experiences that are being done to the convicts. Namely, the innoculation of Pallidine, a drug derived from the syphilis spirochete. This drug enhances drastically its users´s intelligence - but kills them in a few weeks. There is no cure for it.
He takes his newly-appointed job too seriously, and therein lies his doom. For he can´t see, somehow he can´t remember, that he is also one of the prisioners, and there is no hope for him as well. He is also a guinea pig.
Camp Concentration is also reminiscent of other classic, Flowers for Algernon, but in a very twisted way. While Flowers... is an isolated case (and non-fatal at that, even though it´s full of pathos), Camp... is dark, desolate, and ultimately brimming with the expectation of death in the end.
(Here I must insert an observation I made earlier today in the form of a comment to the excelent review by Larry:)
I´m halfway through my review, but I would like to start the comments saying that I don´t know if I agree with you. I think Sachetti diary is a veritable descent to hell (an image with which he is obsessed, BTW, and he opens 334 with Dante´s description of it), and that descent includes his total disintegration, in language as well as in spirit. The first half of Camp Concentration seems to me a study in hubris, in the sense that it is oh-so-smart. But soon Sachetti finds out the bitter truth. Even knowing what was to become of Sachetti, I was very saddened when I read these pages - almost as sad when I learned of Disch´s death.
The second part of the novel is specially painful to read, because you follow in his footsteps, every one of them, in a kind of drug-induced haze which is kind of a paradox, since the drug (or the disease) makes him smarter and smarter, but he already knows that he is going to die in the end, for there is no cure. It is not only an adventure in language (not exactly Joycean, but tipping the hat to the old Irishman) but also in human psychology, a thing that Disch liked to do - and did very well.
It´s not hard at all to compare Disch with Philip K. Dick, and maybe that´s why Dick, near the end of his life, accused Disch of plagiarism. That, however, is not the issue here. Disch was always his own man. In fact, if it wasn´t for Dick´s own paranoia (I want to make it clear here that I love Dick´s writings as much as I love Disch´s, even though for entirely different reasons), which made him also unique in the field, one could also say that Dick was influenced by Disch.
This review is be the first of a series which I´ll be doing here on PWT regarding the work of Tom Disch. After Camp Concentration, the following books will be reviewed:
334
On Wings of Song
The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of
The Word of God
The Wall of America
Disch´s work is too important to be forgotten. Let´s pay homage to him remembering it.
Participating Blogs:
illustration by Fabio Cobiaco
Yes, blame me for all this! :P But I have to say, it is quite cool how each of the six reviews to date have touched upon different facets of Disch's story. I hadn't thought about the Mann connection until you said it, but yes, The Magic Mountain does seem to be a natural comparison point to elements of Camp Archimedes - the almost-but-not-quite-freedom that the inmates/patients feel at each place, as well as that spectre (Death/Disease) that looms in the background.
Speaking of Death and Disch's tale, how does this fit in with the conclusion? That is something I haven't quite resolved to my own satisfaction yet.
I feel the same here, Larry. I don´t know, but my guess is that Disch had always flirted with death in a way of another. He tried to commit suicide early in his life, and I think that he was always held in thrall by this sort of ultimate journey.
But I really wish he was here, making fun of us all and telling us how we are a bunch of suckers who are trying (to no avail, of course) to outsmart him. :-)
That and he'd probably wonder why we didn't pick up on the humorous elements in the story. Dude certainly had a black sense of humor, to say the least. It really would have been nice if he could have been around now to look at us and laugh.
Dammit, I liked him so much I feel like saying a prayer for him - but, wherever he is, he surely WILL laugh his ass off at me for doing this. ;-)
No doubt about that! I had heard he was a curmudgeon in life and doubtless he'd be that now, if he were reading this!
Very nice review, Fabio :)
I should give Disch some other chances, because I really love Philip K. Dick and your association made me curious.
By all means, do that, Dark Wolf! You won´t regret it!
Very interesting review. How do you think Camp Concentration compares to other works by Disch? Or should I just be patient and wait for your reviews on the others?
You mention that Disch was probably an influence on Philip K. Dick. When reading the book I was wondering about who had been influenced by his work. It seems like he could have been a major influence yet I'd never heard of him until recently. Do you know of any other authors who claim to be influenced by Disch (or plagiarized by him as in Dick's case)?
Hi, Kristen!
This is a very important question: I´ll ask for you patience so I can answer it apropriately in the next reviews (but it won´t take long, I promise you that).
:-)
I´m amazed that you never heard of Disch until recently. This is very common in Brazil (not only with authors like Disch, but with our own writers as well), but I honestly couldn´t imagine the SF community would forget a writer like him. I think the Blogger Book Club idea was a very good one, after all.
As for the matter of plagiarism, there are surely a few others, but memory fails me now. I´ll try to do a more consistent research and post here in the next few days, ok?
He wasn't promoted in Romania very much either. And I personally knew about him because of the Philip K. Dick Award which was founded by him.
I don't know if his books are in my country, translated or otherwise. I will try to inform myself :)
I can be patient and I'll look forward to reading the rest of your reviews. :)
I'm not quite sure how I never heard of Disch until recently since it seems as though I really should have. It might just be because I've only been reading science fiction for 3 or 4 years now, but I've at least heard of plenty of other authors even if I haven't read anything by them.
I believe the Mann reference may be because of Mann's Doctor Faustus - there's a direct parallel there via the genius/syphilis connection.