Inextinguishable Fire is an early entry in what continues to reveal itself as a very lengthy and profound career.

The two moments that stuck with me from my first watching (maybe five years ago) and my most re-watching yesterday at my favorite place in my new city were the opening recitation (and its attendant, scarring final image) and the final passage. I had more or less forgotten the strong if slightly procedural middle section, in which the groundwork is laid for his discussion of how highly advanced and unbelievably brutal weapons are made. Specifically, his interest lies in the way a highly “intensified division of labor” and the military industrial complex enable these horrific weapons to be made by unassuming (though typically willingly uninformed) workers. It’s fascinating and an excellent reminder of our own engagements with a society that does nasty things we may not approve of but enable through complicity. It’s also proof of my own naiveté that I remain shocked by the heights of technology utilized in a war more than 40 years ago.

The final section remains my favorite in part because of its formal playfulness. There’s also something to the strange German rigidity that seems to work better with direct address than with the stilted narrativity of the middle section. Plus, there’s this:

More here and here.