'Camp Concentration' - Book Review

Camp Concentration
by Thomas M. Disch
1968

Our first-person voice is Louis Sacchetti, an obese poet and conscientious objector against a near future war, jailed and then moved involuntarily to "Camp Archimedes." The conditions are far better than the jail he was in initially, but he's still jailed and he eventually finds out that all the other inmates (he is to be a reporter) have been injected with a form of syphilis which causes the body to terminally deteriorate while simultaneously making the subject immensely more intelligent. References to Doctor Faustus abound.

I remembered this book with immense admiration from my youth, and I find that I still - perhaps even more so - find it a breath-taking piece of work. The writing is spectacular, every word of it. And in many ways, that's so much harder than coming up with a good plot (which he has also done). Disch's writing is loaded with literary references, far more of them than I got when I was 20, or even now, 30 years later - although I definitely caught more of them this time.

I really don't understand how this excellent book isn't better known ...