J.G.Ballard - Classic or dud etc

I love the Re:Search interview bk w/ Ballard, where he throws out a new, outrageous idea or a sly observation in virtually every sentence - "What I hope the computer and TV revolution will bring about is a scientific information channel where you can just press a button and..." (J.G. anticipates the internet in 1982!)

Has there been a Steve Aylett thread?

Then again, he wrote Empire of the Sun which will forever remain a literary classic. Anyone who endured the horrors described here during their most formative years would undoubtedly emerge from their chrysalis a trifle unhinged.

He's an intriguing author, but yes, his work does fall into a pattern after a while - Running Wild, High Rise, Cocaine Nights etc. I think he writes that way because during his adolescence he personally experienced the full effect of a society breaking down and he's still coming to terms with the emotional fallout.

I love ballard to death- his prose style is so reserved as to be monotonous at times, but it's the perfect counterpoint to all the weirdness and darkness. He does tend to write the same novel over and over again, much like Dick did, but he is totally classic.

Search - all his short stories. Pithy, punchy, little mindfucks. My favourite - COncentration City. Destroy - you leave him alone you nasty people!

i'm not sure about ballard, i can't get too excited about his stuff, but there's obviously something there. i've just been reading iain sinclair's book on 'crash', which is pretty good, v interesting about ballard and moorcock and that crowd during the 60s. IS also captures ballard as 'the poet of thatcherism' more or less. the point about jgb is that he fkn LOVES late modernity, right? these airfields and motorways are not desolate for him; they make the realisation of our fucked-up dreams possible, yeah? dunno, but it seems to me that his more conservative followers have missed the point a bit, turned jgb into some kind of nostalgic.

Moorcock on Ballard.

http://www.ballardian.com/images/mm_jgb_brighton.jpg

Scott Thompson IS J.G. Ballard

thanks, ned.

Yes. Thanks!

"why is ballard not in the sci-fi section in bookshops while moorcock is?"

Ballard's sci-fi books are in most good sci-fi sections!

Yer welcome. Friend forwarded that link along and I knew I had to share!

great interview - excited at the prospect of another Jerry Cornelius novel!

Ballardian is usually pretty decent reading

I started Crash but couldn't even read half of it. :-( The rest I love immensely. Crash was just... too much, I think.

His 60s/70s stories are his best work, I think.

Crash may be the one novel of his I actually couldn't STOP reading, the non-stop imagery/car-crash language was weirdly absorbing in a rather disturbing way... Hello America I also quite liked. And the Atrocity Exhibition is completely fantastic, altho calling that a "novel" is kind of a stretch... I like Ballard plenty and have enjoyed bits of his work over the years, but I gotta say he returns continually to plots and themes I get pretty easily bored with. He has so many novels where there's a disaffected protagonist drawn into some creepy cult-like group that's headed by a messianic but crazed leader who of course ends up killing himself/everybody all set against some kind of post-apocalyptic backdrop. Even Crash, which I liked the most, more or less fits this description. It gets kinda repetitive.

That's like saying Dick returns to the same themes over and over though (which he did, but they were great themes!)

The novels are pretty uniformly strong up until the mid-70s (High Rise and Concrete Island are just amazing, but the eco-disaster ones are just about as good IMO.) The few things I've read from the 80s-90s I've not liked so much.

haha yeah PKD is totally guilty of it as well, maybe I just find his pet obsessions and plot-tricks (ie, the old "what is REALLY real?" switcheroo) more engaging.

Ballard seems to find the psychology/phenomenon of cults much more interesing than I do... I haven't read High Rise, Concrete Island I remember reading when I was probably too young to grasp much of it and doesn't fit the mold I've described. I think the only other novels I've read were the Drowned World, and the aforementioned Hello America and Crash, which all have that cult-leader-in-a-strange-post-apocalyptic-world story arc going on.

(i wrote a whole paragraph response then realised I was writing about Hubert Selby. Time for bed.)

Yeah, Shakey those are not his best novels (well except for The Drowned World.) Re-read Concrete Island and then find High Rise (which has that theme, I guess, but it's really really really really ridiculously good) and The Crystal World.

Wow, what an excellent interview.

"High Rise" is so good, Shakey, you've got to read that one, man. It's one of his best.

What's the short story about the men who are test subjects for a procedure to eliminate the need for sleep? That's great.

Ah, Manhole 69.

I really enjoyed that interview but was a bit surprised by the way Moorcock dismissed everything Ballard's done since Empire of the Sun. I thought Super-Cannes was v. good.

I loved the short stories as a teen. Went back to them 10 years ago and thought his style was a bit lacking. Probly ought to read some again, but I've heard him interviewed and he's frankly a bit of a dick which is off-putting.

The only short stories book available in the US is this best-of that's kind of lacking. Meanwhile, there are these two giant volumes you can get in the UK that I bought online that are pretty great.

Just listened to a great interview with Ballard, which can be downloaded here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/nightwaves/pip/la0fu/

Apparently he has advanced prostate cancer which has spread to his bones, basically game over.

Shame. I remember hearing an interview he did with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 when he came across as the most pompous peppery old buffer imaginable.

Well, he's very plummy! But he's fascinating in this interview - mainly about violence and death, including his own.

I imagine being in a Radio 5 studio with Simon Mayo was not his natural habitat

That was the interview I was referring to upthread. Of course, being an idiot doesn't preclude you from being a good writer.

The Complete Short Stories is gold.

just finished "crash" (reading for the first time) and got damn

Thought this was gonna be RIP. Glad it's not.