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Ballard's 'The Recognition' on BBC7
Author: Simon Sellars • Apr 10th, 2008 •Category: audio, Ballardosphere, short stories
You have two days left to listen to the dramatisation of Ballard’s “The Recognition”, which “explains the story behind the bizarre circus that rolls into town”. It’s read by Michael Maloney and is available on the BBC Radio 7 website.
Here are the opening paragraphs:
On Midsummer’s Eve a small circus visited the town in the West Country where I was spending my holiday. Three days earlier the large travelling fair which always came to the town in the summer, equipped with a ferris wheel, merry-go-rounds and dozens of booths and shooting galleries, had taken up its usual site on the open common in the centre of the town, and this second arrival was forced to pitch its camp on the waste ground beyond the warehouses along the river.
At dusk, when I strolled through the town, the ferris wheel was revolving above the coloured lights, and people were riding the carousels and walking arm in arm along the cobbled roads that surrounded the common. Away from this hubbub of noise the streets down to the river were almost deserted, and I was glad to walk alone through the shadows past the boarded shopfronts. Midsummer’s Eve seemed to me a time for reflection as much as for celebration, for a careful watch on the shifting movements of nature.
J.G. Ballard, ‘The Recognition’ (1967).
Author:
Simon Sellars
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I listened to this in the early hours during the week on BBC 7 – and am still uneasy …
I listened many times to “The Recognition” on BBC (both last week and some months ago when it also was on BBC7), but I still have no idea what the animals were, or what the familiar smell is, or what’s the story behind the circus, or anything. Can you please explain this story to me??
Well, in that case you did not have ‘the recognition’.
I didn’t have the recognition, but the guy in the story certainly recognized the smell and knew what was in the circus cages. The best guess I have is that the rude drunken circus patrons were caged up the next morning. But that still doesn’t make a lot of sense. And i still don’t know what the smell is.
Another possible mystery is why a previous response was deleted (it was by Simon Sellars, who said he’d re-read or re-listen to the story and get back to me).
Funny thing is I really liked the story (or more accurately, the BBC dramatization) even though I can’t figure it out.
It’s human beings in the cages — and the smell is the smell of humanity.
I think the story is designed to be thought-provoking, and to stay in the mind as a mystery. I don’t think J.G.Ballard meant anyone to guess what the animals or the smell was. That’s the strength of the story.
the animal in the cages is human. but the cages and circus are metaphors. the meaning of the allegory is that humans are after all just another animal, and perhaps the oddest animal of all.
All the previous comments are possible and, indeed, probably the responses J.G. Ballard sought to evoke and, although I agree with all those comments, my personal feeling is that it is a well written, evocative, thought provoking, self indulgent little riddle (well done the BBC dramatization by the way) in which J.G. Ballard himself had no fixed conclusion to hint at. In other words the story ends up being a little pointless.
The clue – if you’d like one – is that the lock on the cage the sailor enters is on the inside. Or is that Jim just providing an easy answer for those that need them?
@Hank Young – Exactly. The detail I found most interesting is quite small and easy to miss. In that last section, as the narrator inspects the cages and the “animals” howl at him, he says “the thin figures stood openly in front of the bars that protected them from me” which is an intriguing way of wording it. There’s still a huge mystery here in terms of what exactly happened and why, and it’s a little bit maddening being so close but so far away, but that’s quite enjoyable too.