Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard
April 21, 2009
Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard
Originally uploaded by miketransreal
So J. G. Ballard has died.
Not unexpected, but still very sad.
The first novel I remember reading of his was The Drought, or maybe The Wind From Nowhere (which should be in the picture, but must have been misplaced on my bookshelves). Strange post-disaster chronicles, concentrating as much on people’s obsessions and how they felt, than about responding to their changed circumstances in appropriate (for mainstream sf) ways…
I was also reading other ‘new wave’ authors who were following in his footsteps, looking into crystaline pools in metal salt marches like M. John Harrison or brooding on the futility of trying re-ignite humanities dreams like Mark S. Geston. Michael Moorcock and his doomed heroes… the strange introspective novels of Barry Malzberg…
Ballard was there before them all, creating strange new landscapes – dare I mention empty swimming pools! – and broken characters who acted out their hopes an dreams.
Some great novels and short stories, also some lesser work in his later years which seemed unable to break new territory, although it remained very readable, as he set stories against the harsh light of the French Riviera or the repetitive landscapes of modern suburbia.
From the early 80s on, he wrote quite widely about his early wartime life (his article in Foundation 24 was, I think, the first major autobiographical piece, later expanded into Empire of the Sun) and his life in the 50s & 60s in The Kindness of Women (with the accompanying press stories of inaccuracies and divergences from the facts).
Despite this, he revisited many of the same events again in his autobiography Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, his most recent and, I believe, final book, written after his terminal illness had been diagnosed…
He’ll be missed.
[ this replaces a very similar post made yesterday, because I wanted to change the picture and it wouldn't work otherwise... ]
