Divergent Perspectives on JG Ballard
by Krishna Andavolu
APRIL 20, 2009 TAGS:
If, as his American obits point out, J.G. Ballard was a cult novelist, then the cult that held Ballard’s work in the highest esteem is the nation of England. Judging by the obits from American sources and from publications across the pond, it seems that Ballard’s legacy differs depending on what side of the road you drive on. He is either a cult novelist known best for his autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun, or he is a literary legend whose career spanned five decades and offered insight into the human condition.
Perhaps the English press got a head start covering Ballard’s death on Sunday, April 19 and have had the time to consider and write obits and appreciations of high praise for the 78 year-old. But Ballard had been battling pancreatic cancer for over three years, so news of his demise is hardly a surprise. In fact, his last book, a 2008-memoir titled The Miracles of Life mused about death’s imminent grasp with great humor and pathos. Shouldn’t the big news organizations have been prepared?
The Atlantic divide on Ballard’s importance is, most likely, a matter of national comportment. Its like is savoring crumpets slathered with marmite: very British. Ballard carried the flag of a particular brand of U.K. dystopianism, a post-empire distrust for institutions, that has been slouching towards Bethlehem since the time of W.B. Yeats.
In his early novels, Ballard pictured how society would respond to great catastrophes. The Drowned World (1962) was about a flooded planet due to global warming. The Wind from Nowhere (1961) detailed civilization’s erosion from constant hurricane-force winds. And The Drought (1965) was, well, a story of a drought.
From catastrophe fiction in his early years, Ballard moved to novels that pictured the sordid psychology of the future: the fascism of the shopping mall and the dual sins of consumerism and conformity.
“I see myself as a weather forecaster. I see stormy weather,” he recounted to the BBC.
In an interview with the Australian paper, The Age, Ballard added, “The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we’re sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we’re not.”
The three years Ballard spent as a child in an internment camp in Japan during World War II no doubt influenced his conceptions of human nature. These years were the basis for his 1984 breakout novel, Empire of the Sun, a fictional account of his boyhood years in captivity. The novel was adapted into a movie by Stephen Spielberg.
Amidst the casual brutality of being a prisoner, Ballard could play. He recalled, “I have—I won’t say happy—not unpleasant memories of the camp.”That experience acts as a tidy metaphor for his relationship with the novel. While constantly prickled by the faulty logic of human civilization and its deadening effects on the human soul, he could write. He could tell stories. He could play.
One last instance of the Atlantic divide: Music.
NME, the English music magazine, ran this headline on their Web site:
“No Future - Why JG Ballard Is Rock’s Favourite Novelist.” They are writing, of course, of the rainy day, post-industrial music of the 1970s and early 1980s, citing Ballard’s influence on bands like Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy, and of his contemporary influence on Thom Yorke, the main songwriter for the British band Radiohead.
What American rock band would list J.G. Ballard as a seminal thematic influence?
If there is one uniting factor between readers in the U.S. and the U.K., it is both sides’ distaste for Ballard’s 1973 novel, Crash, which detailed the lives sexual deviants drawn to copulating in car wrecks.
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Obit from the Telegraph, the best line:
Obit from the Washington Post, of his varied career before writing:
NME’s musical appreciation, musicians readily eschewing nerd-dom:
Krishna Andavolu is managing editor of Obit.
Perhaps the English press got a head start covering Ballard’s death on Sunday, April 19 and have had the time to consider and write obits and appreciations of high praise for the 78 year-old. But Ballard had been battling pancreatic cancer for over three years, so news of his demise is hardly a surprise. In fact, his last book, a 2008-memoir titled The Miracles of Life mused about death’s imminent grasp with great humor and pathos. Shouldn’t the big news organizations have been prepared?The Atlantic divide on Ballard’s importance is, most likely, a matter of national comportment. Its like is savoring crumpets slathered with marmite: very British. Ballard carried the flag of a particular brand of U.K. dystopianism, a post-empire distrust for institutions, that has been slouching towards Bethlehem since the time of W.B. Yeats.
In his early novels, Ballard pictured how society would respond to great catastrophes. The Drowned World (1962) was about a flooded planet due to global warming. The Wind from Nowhere (1961) detailed civilization’s erosion from constant hurricane-force winds. And The Drought (1965) was, well, a story of a drought.
From catastrophe fiction in his early years, Ballard moved to novels that pictured the sordid psychology of the future: the fascism of the shopping mall and the dual sins of consumerism and conformity.
“I see myself as a weather forecaster. I see stormy weather,” he recounted to the BBC.
In an interview with the Australian paper, The Age, Ballard added, “The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we’re sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we’re not.”
The three years Ballard spent as a child in an internment camp in Japan during World War II no doubt influenced his conceptions of human nature. These years were the basis for his 1984 breakout novel, Empire of the Sun, a fictional account of his boyhood years in captivity. The novel was adapted into a movie by Stephen Spielberg.
Amidst the casual brutality of being a prisoner, Ballard could play. He recalled, “I have—I won’t say happy—not unpleasant memories of the camp.”That experience acts as a tidy metaphor for his relationship with the novel. While constantly prickled by the faulty logic of human civilization and its deadening effects on the human soul, he could write. He could tell stories. He could play.
One last instance of the Atlantic divide: Music.
NME, the English music magazine, ran this headline on their Web site:
“No Future - Why JG Ballard Is Rock’s Favourite Novelist.” They are writing, of course, of the rainy day, post-industrial music of the 1970s and early 1980s, citing Ballard’s influence on bands like Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy, and of his contemporary influence on Thom Yorke, the main songwriter for the British band Radiohead.
What American rock band would list J.G. Ballard as a seminal thematic influence?
If there is one uniting factor between readers in the U.S. and the U.K., it is both sides’ distaste for Ballard’s 1973 novel, Crash, which detailed the lives sexual deviants drawn to copulating in car wrecks.
--
Obit from the Telegraph, the best line:
Ballard admitted to spending too much of his adult life drinking . ‘It was a great sense of achievement,’ he recalled, ‘when my first drink of the day was not at nine in the morning but at noon and then at eight. Life got much duller as a result.’ No doubt as an antidote to boredom, he began taking the mind-altering drug LSD and recalled ‘an indulgent over use’ of silver spray-paint in decorating his footwear.
Obit from the Washington Post, of his varied career before writing:
He was born James Graham Ballard and moved with his family to England in 1946. He studied medicine at Cambridge University and served as a British Royal Air Force pilot before working as a salesman, an advertising copywriter and a scientific-journal editor before establishing himself as a novelist.
NME’s musical appreciation, musicians readily eschewing nerd-dom:
Ballard’s work resonates with lyricists, too, because it is science-fiction without being ‘sci-fi’ in a naff sense. Pointedly, Ballard never used the phrase, he preferred to call it “speculative fantasy”. Hence, by borrowing his imagery, bands have been able to conjure a dystopian future without resorting to stale tropes such as spaceships and warpdrives. Without sounding like nerds, essentially.
Krishna Andavolu is managing editor of Obit.
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