RIP J. G. Ballard

As the thread title says. He was probably my favourite living authour, for what that's worth.

Sad to see him go. RIP.

I've said this in another thread somewhere, but his autobiography Miracles of Life was possibly my favourite of his works. The mixture of dispassionate examination of the historical circumstances that came to play on his own life, combined with the obvious love he had for his own family, was a great combination.

I heard of him because J. Robbins from Jawbox recommended him years ago in some interview, so I picked up "Concrete Island" and "Crash" - 2 of the most unique and interesting books I've ever read. I need to read some more of his stuff. R.I.P.

Yes, although those are two of the best of his novels. Read High Rise next.

Ahhh no way man. Fuck!

Wha? Link?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8007331.stm

78, "after a long illness". Like W.S. Burroughs, I kind of hoped the guy would buck the trend and just keep on going forever :( I'm really cut up about this, he was kind of a hero to me in a way.

Well I knew it was coming, but I still gasped a little when I saw this. An unmatchable presence really, everyone talks about Crash and Empire Of The Sun (both great) but his short stories were where it was really at.

No kidding, I ordered the two-part short story collection from the UK since it's nonexistent here, and I still haven't made it through the whole thing.

RIP. That's two people I admired a lot taken by advanced prostate cancer. Judging from the snippet of video I saw of Frank Zappa near the end, it seems like a really horrible prolonged death.

RIP

RIP

oh man ... RIP.

I recently had to read Cocaine Nights for school and they've been reading The Drowned World on BBC7, so he's been very much at the forefront of my thoughts lately. Terrific, terrific writer, shame to see him go. Everytime I read a Ballard novel I always start thinking "meh, why did I bother?" only to find myself sucked into these expansive worlds that I never want to stop reading about. R.I.P.

very sad news. atrocity exhibition blew my mind when i was a teenager and kind of still does.

Early Ballard is the bomb. Amazing stuff. Dreadful characterization, but the psychological and atmospheric effects were something else. As Kingsely Amis said, reminiscent of Conrad in places, esp in the Drowned World.

i should reread concrete island -- i think of that scenario every time i drive through those bleak phoenix highways.

Shame. The collected short stories book is stellar.

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2135/advert2a3200050.jpg

via

Damn. I just had my first introduction to him about a month ago w High Rise. RIP

I didn't enjoy reading him - that's hardly surprising: he wrote with casual froideur of sex, death, mutilation, alienation, technology, a difficult load of writing to live with. He wasn't really a stylist: something about him was more doggedly workmanlike than that. Though Amis admired him, he maybe represented an alternative tradition both to mainstream UK fiction and to the line of beauty and perfect sentences. Something about the relative plainness and prolific production was an important part of that stance - almost (it strikes me now) like Mark E. Smith standing puritanically apart from rock.

But I did view him as one of post-war Britain's major imaginations and interventions; maybe more than Britain's. He's surely on a par with Philip K. Dick, if not even way beyond him already; not a writer to rank alongside Beckett who cared differently for words, but a greater figure than Hunter S. Thompson or William Burroughs, a greater mind than Kerouac or Ginsberg, maybe equal to Mailer or Vonnegut if you'll indulge the thought. He was Very Twentieth Century. He might be read centuries hence.

I pulled this off the shelf and read the interviews for the first time in years. prescient, visionary, genial too. what a mind.

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That's a thoughtful tribute, pinefox. I would add, though, that Empire of the Sun is quite, quite different from the technologically-driven work. I can see why it's all grouped together because of the horror, but in terms of humanity it's on another level entirely.

Ditto for Miracles of Life. Like Eric Hobsbawm's autobiography, it serves a brief history of the 20th century, as well as an extremely well-written memoir.

I found the extracts of Miracles of Life (Radio 4 some time last year) rather moving (devoted to his kids, etc). Must read it. RIP.

major bummer RIP

I would like to read Love and Napalm (The Atrocity Exhibition).

From the NYT:

But he became an inflammatory figure with a 1969 book, “The Atrocity Exhibition,” an experimental mélange of brief narratives and seeming scientific reports that drew on events like the Vietnam War, the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the deaths of James Dean and Jayne Mansfield in automobile accidents to posit a connection among the mass media, violence and sexuality.

It excited special outrage for a chapter titled “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.”

The book’s original American publisher, Doubleday, after printing a first edition, destroyed all copies of it; the book was finally published three years later by Grove Press under the title “Love & Napalm: U.S.A.” The reviews were wildly contrasting.

It's not very nice.

i hope this gets made: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462335/

What happened to the Europeans in China and the rest of Asia after WWII? Did they all get kicked out, or are there residual populations there today? It says in Miracles of Life that Ballard's house was still standing in 1991, but I guess it may not be now.