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4.5
This book changed my life. I’m still not sure how exactly but I feel it. Enough to give it 5 stars not because it is perfect but because of this feeling I found to be also in me and exemplified in this book. This feeling is not perfect information. Still it’s there. I had been for many years attempting to jettison this me out the airlock into space but it appears I must instead embrace all of me, including this shadow side. Back a few years, when this part of me was largely running amok in my psyche, I read Camp Concentration by Disch and found it to be so incredibly dystopian. I mean it is the story of a guy going insane as part of a mad totalitarian science project. So depressing really. It surprises me that I didn’t enjoy that book more but there is something inaccessible about Disch. I suppose 1984 is similar but Camp Concentration puts you directly inside the mind of the madman, a more direct feed of insanity. For this reason it is uncomfortable to read. Perhaps the pandemic is finally too much to think about so I’m in the mood for madness again. I am researching UFOs (cue laugh track) so I was pointed in this direction of Disch due to his discussion of Whitley Strieber as mentioned in the book Prisoner of Infinity. Similarly this book is not entirely about my subject but only an oblique angle on aliens, abductions and UFOs, through the cultural lens of sci-fi. Disch was part of the sci-fi New Wave. He met a few heavy hitters like J. G. Ballard. From a certain angle Disch too is a heavy hitter but perhaps a lesser angel in the hierarchy compared to writers like Ballard. Perhaps this is what Disch is a little upset about. He is fairly pessimistic and does not hold out much hope for sci-fi or literature even. He seems to be on the cusp of anticipating the total corporate takeover of thought. Soon there will be no universities, only think tanks, TED talks and ‘thought leadership’. Soon there will be no sci-fi only streaming events and media franchise tie-ins. Disch nails it: “Sameness is what the marketers want us to want.” (p. 211) You can quibble with these points, yes. They are not entirely accurate as to current state but only speak to a certain tendency in our society. But that is how society drifts into new realities. This book features what I found to be a fairly devastating critique of Star Trek, which was an after school special of sorts for many in my generation. Star Trek, says Disch, is propaganda for the HR department, getting you ready for your time in the cubicle. The Gen-Xer in me says ‘ouch’ but admits there is an angle of truth here. Perhaps I’m disappointed in my own desperate grasping for comfort/escape in my media intake. Like Wally from My Dinner with Andre I enjoy my electric blanket in media form now and again, including reruns of Star Trek. I wonder what Disch would have thought of the pandemic? He is what I now see as a ‘brutal realist’, a materialist even, though he positions himself neither to the right or to the left on the political spectrum. He is (or would characterize himself I think) as that rare breed, a 'free thinker'. On Wikipedia, I read a description of his first novel, which is titled optimistically ’Genocides’. Just the plot synopsis alone left me feeling drained of all meaning. He has so many zingers but I will quote this passage to give you an idea of his takedown of the self-deluded American solipsistic (narcissistic) psyche: “I am the Alpha and Omega; I’ve been abducted by aliens; the speed of light can be exceeded; I hunt for dinosaurs in my time machine every other Thursday; I may be fat but I’m a telepath, so beware. Anything goes, if it’s a satisfying daydream.” (p. 221) Back to Orwell’s unperson here, or as I’ve said elsewhere, the average or ‘statistical’ person of modern society, which could be described as the most extreme American daydream, the serial killer. Though Disch does not take his analysis in this direction one easily could. There are so many alternate realities on display here, so many possibilities for society.
