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

and muddied the banner of faith, not to mention hope (already quite muddy
these days), with his scurrilities. I remembered the dismal summer of my
fifteenth year, the summer that Louie II was in sole possession of my soul.
Dismal? Actually, there was a good deal of exhilaration in saying _Non
serviam_, an exhilaration that is still confused with my first memories of
sex.
Is my present situation so very much different? Except that now,
prudently, I say _Non serviam_ to Caesar rather than to God.
When the chaplain came by to hear my confession I didn't speak of these
scruples. In his innocence he would have been apt to take the side of the
cynical Louie II. But he has learned by now not to employ the meager resources
of his casuistry against me (another retrograde Irish Thomist, he) and
pretends to accept me at my own moral valuation. "But beware, Louis," he
counseled, before absolving me, "beware of intellectual pride." Meaning, I
have always supposed, beware of intellect.
How to distinguish between righteousness and self-will? Between the two
Louies? How, once committed, to stop _questioning?_ (That is the question.)
Does someone like R.M. have such problems? He gives the impression of never
having had a doubt in his whole life--and Mormons seem to have so much more to
doubt.
I am being less than charitable. Those wells, too, are drying up.


May 16
We were sent out of the prison today on a detail to cut down and burn
blighted trees. A new virus, or one of our own, gone astray. The landscape
outside the prison is, despite the season, nearly as desolate as that within.
The war has at last devoured the reserves of our affluence and is damaging the
fibers of the everyday.
Returning, we had to file through the clinic to get our latest
inoculations. The doctor in charge held me back after the others had left. A
moment's panic: Had he recognized in me the symptoms of one of the war's new
diseases? No, it was to show me the review of _The Hills of S!_ Bless, bless.
Mons in _New Dissent_. She liked it (hurray) though she took exception,
expectably, to the fetish poems. She also missed the references to Rilke,
which I so labored over. Weh! While I read the review the good doctor injected
what seemed like several thousand cc's of bilgy ook into my thigh; in my
happiness I scarcely noticed. A review--I am _real!_ Must write a letter to
Mons, thanking her. Perhaps R.M. will mail it for me. Maybe I'll even be able
to start writing again.


May 17
The two faggots with whom, grudgingly, the Mafia and I share our cell
(it is not, you will observe, _theirs_) are suddenly not speaking to each
other. Donny sits on the can all day and tinkles blues. Peter broods butchly
on his bunk. Occasionally Donny will address a loud complaint to me,
concerning Peter's promiscuities, real or imagined. (When do they find
opportunities for unfaithfulness?) Danny, younger and black, is feminine, even
in his bitchiness, which is skilled and futile. Peter, at thirty, is still