(Vintage - 1969)
One of the themes in Camp Concentration is The Intangibility of Intellect. The body may be destroyed, but the Mind -- not the Soul, not the spiritual soul -- can somehow survive. (Or so it believes.)
(Mordecai Washington):
"In my worst moments, with my head in the pisser, retching, the old brainjelly goes right on fermenting, oblivious to the low soma. No, not oblivious, just indifferent, aloof, a spectator."
The Mind believes that it can survive the destruction of the body. Maybe it can´t, but when the Mind is busy thinking, it doesn't care if the body is dying. The present of the Mind is more important than the future of the body.
In this context, "the Mind" doesn't mean just intellectualism, but the Ego drive that tries to affirm the power of Man over Nature. Sacchetti and Mordecai are two examples of the intellectual Mind; General Haast and Dr. Aimée Busk are two examples of the pragmatic mind.
(Sacchetti on General Haast:) "He carries to an extreme the maniacal American credo that there is no death. And he is probably a garden of cancers. Isn't that so, H.H.?" (CC, p. 23, June 3 entry).
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