"Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

of all my thoughts.


May 13
I must speak of Smede. Warden Smede, my arch enemy. Smede the arbitrary,
who still refuses me library privileges, allows me only a New Testament and a
prayer book. It is as though I had been left, as was so often threatened, for
my summer vacation with the loathed Uncle Morris of my childhood (who
counseled my parents that I would "lose my eyes" by reading too much). Bald,
booming, fat with the fatness of a ruined athelete: Smede. One might despise
him only for having such a name. Today I learned from the small portion of my
monthly letter from Andrea that the censor (Smede?) had not blacked out that
the proofs of _The Hills of Switzerland_, which had been sent to me here, were
returned to the publisher with a note explaining the rules for correspondents
with prisoners. That was three months ago. The book is in print now. It has
been _reviewed!_ (I suspect the publisher hurried so in the hope of getting a
little free publicity from the trial.)
The censor, naturally, removed the review Andrea had enclosed. Agonies
of vanity. For ten years I could lay claim to no book but my wretched doctor's
thesis on Winstanley; now my poems are in print--and it may be another five
years before I'm allowed to see them. May Smede's eyes rot like potatoes in
spring! May he convulse with the Malaysian palsies!
Have tried to go on with the cycle of "Ceremonies." Can't. The wells are
dry, dry.


May 14
Spaghetti.
On nights like this (I write these notes after lights-out, by the glow
of the perpetual twenty-watter above the toilet bowl) I wonder if I have done
the right thing in electing to come here, if I'm not being a fool. Is this the
stuff of heroism? or of masochism? In private life my conscience was never so
conscientious. But, damn it, this war is _wrong!_
I had thought (I had convinced myself) that coming here voluntarily
would be little different from joining a Trappist monastery, that my
deprivations would easily be bearable if freely chosen. One of my regrets as a
married man has always been that the contemplative life, in its more rarefied
aspects, has been denied me. I fancied asceticism some rare luxury, a
spiritual truffle. Ha!
On the bunk beneath mine a Mafia petit bourgeois (snared on tax evasion
charges) snores his content. Bedsprings squeak in the visible darkness. I try
to think of Andrea. In high school Brother Wilfred counseled that when lustful
thoughts arose we should pray to the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps it worked for
him.


May 15
Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita indeed! My thirty-fifth birthday, and
a slight case of the horrors. For a few moments this morning, before the metal
shaving mirror, my double, Louie II, was in the ascendant. He mocked and raged