Comments on: Ballardcraft: Ballard/Lovecraft

By: Leigh Penman

Leigh Penman — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:27:18 +0000

One overlooked item of interest is that Arkham House, the publishing firm set up by August Derleth specifically in order to set Lovecraft’s works into print, also published a collection of J.G. Ballard’s fiction.

The book, ‘Memories of the Space Age,’ was first issued in 1988, and collected many of Ballard’s space stories.

It’s still available from Arkham House today: http://www.arkhamhouse.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=arkhamhouse&Product_Code=0-87054-157-9

By: John Coulthart

John Coulthart — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:31:52 +0000

Re: Borges. His story “There are more things” in The Book of Sand is dedicated to HPL. And Metallica’s “The Thing That Should Not Be” on Master of Puppets is their other Cthulhoid piece.

By: Nick Garrard

Nick Garrard — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:19:49 +0000

Great piece! I think there’s a lot to be said for the weird correlation of radical form and reactionary politics in all these writers – Eliot’s intellectual snobbery and Lovecraft’s infamous prejudices being two obvious examples.

Isn’t Ballard on record as talking about the horror genre in general as mis-placed death anxiety?

By: Bosse de Nage

Bosse de Nage — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:29:05 +0000

Afterthought: tying in music — k-punk’s writing on Lovecraft’s influence on The Fall got me listening seriously to that band (never had much exposure to them previously in South Africa); fantastic, really.

By: Bosse de Nage

Bosse de Nage — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:26:36 +0000

To me Lovecraft and Burroughs constitute a type of Janus, or demon janitor, if you prefer. The horror, the distrust of the feminine … You could probably add T.S. Eliot, even (the Burbank…Bleistein poem has a truly Lovecraftian moment, and there are others).

I triangulate Lovecraft/Burroughs, Ballard and Borges. Compare ‘A New Refutation of Time’ with the odd Ballard pieces on the time-space disease, or rapture, mentioned here recently.

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:57:17 +0000

Thanks Anthony, yes Burroughs does indeed seem to be the switching station for many ports of call…

Funnily enough, I listened to Ride the Lightning recently and found it really rather good.

By: links for 2008-07-18 at found_drama

links for 2008-07-18 at found_drama — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:40:07 +0000

[...] Ballardcraft: Ballard/Lovecraft (tags: blog Ballard Lovecraft literature essay todo) [...]

By: Anthony Osborne

Anthony Osborne — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:19:59 +0000

Getting beaten up by a bunch of Metallica fans … that’s the type of trauma that can stay with you for life.
Lovecraft, like Ballard, seems to upset the literary purists … I’ve read enough slighting comments about their prose styles (Theroux’s bloody awful pun about Ballard’s craft ebbing, for example) to last me a lifetime.
I can fit Lovecraft right next to Burroughs … those conservative weirdos in their buttoned up suits, hiding pure madness behind the respectable facade, and, as Mr Coulthart points out, from there you can jump to Ballard.

By: Matt’s Bookosphere July 16, 2008 « Enter the Octopus

Matt’s Bookosphere July 16, 2008 « Enter the Octopus — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:10:44 +0000

[...] Cool piece on J.G. Ballard and H.P. Lovecraft [...]

By: John Coulthart

John Coulthart — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:09:07 +0000

PS: I should have added Burroughs as the connecting tissue here, something that Benjamin Noys notes above. JGB may not have read any HPL but Burroughs was certainly a fan, not only of Lovecraft but of other writers of the era such as Henry Kuttner. Dave Mitchell and I both rate ‘the black fruit’ in The Ticket that Exploded as being especially Lovecraftian. In the opening Invocation to Cities of the Red Night Burroughs summons a few names from the “Simon” edition of The Necronomicon, as well as dedicating the book to “Kutulu, the Sleeping Serpent who cannot be summoned.” All this before you even get to WSB’s own brand of cosmic paranoia and alien parasites.