Shaghai/Shepparton
By Simon Sellars • Apr 9th, 2008 •
Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Shepperton, autobiography
Reviewing Miracles, the Age newspaper drops a clanger. Still, I wouldn’t mind visiting ‘Shaghai’ one day…
By Simon Sellars • Apr 9th, 2008 •
Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Shepperton, autobiography
Reviewing Miracles, the Age newspaper drops a clanger. Still, I wouldn’t mind visiting ‘Shaghai’ one day…
By Dan O'Hara • Mar 23rd, 2008 •
Category: Freud, Germany, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, Shanghai, William Burroughs, archival, dystopia, film, psychology, science fiction, sexual politics, short stories, surrealism, utopia
This is the second of Dan O’Hara’s re-translations of JGB interviews originally published in German. This one dates from 1976, and in it Ballard provides comment on Russian writers and explains how film technique infiltrates and influences his own writing.
By Mike B • Feb 21st, 2008 •
Category: Shanghai, Shepperton, Steven Spielberg, WWII, autobiography, consumerism, interviews
Here’s the last in our batch of transcripts of recent Miracles promotions: James Naughtie’s interview with JGB for BBC Radio 4.
By Mike B • Feb 17th, 2008 •
Category: Iain Sinclair, Salvador Dali, Shanghai, Shepperton, WWII, autobiography, interviews, speed & violence, surrealism, visual art
Here’s a transcription of the BBC Radio Front Row review of Miracles, presented by Mark Lawson and featuring Iain Sinclair and Hermione Lee.
By Mike B • Feb 14th, 2008 •
Category: Shanghai, Shepperton, Steven Spielberg, WWII, autobiography, celebrity culture, interviews
This one’s a transcript of BBC 2’s Newsnight Review segment on Miracles of Life. It features Tony Parsons, Julie Myerson and John Harris and is presented by Kirsty Wark.
By Ballardian • Feb 7th, 2008 •
Category: Shanghai, Shepperton, WWII, alternate worlds, autobiography, consumerism, interviews
Here’s a transcript of Philip Dodd’s recent BBC Radio 3 interview with JGB.
By Simon Sellars • Feb 3rd, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, architecture, audio, consumerism, fashion, photography, sexual politics, speed & violence, surveillance, travel, urban revolt, visual art
This post is given over to recent links readers have sent me. ‘Ballardian’ or not? You decide.
By Simon Sellars • Feb 2nd, 2008 •
Category: Shanghai, Shepperton, WWII, autobiography, bibliography, non-fiction
From amazon.co.uk:
Synopsis
‘Miracles of Life’ opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J.G.Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp. In the intervening chapters Ballard creates a memoir that is both an enthralling narrative and a detailed examination of […]
By Ballardian • Feb 2nd, 2008 •
Category: Shanghai, Shepperton, WWII, William Burroughs, audio, dystopia, interviews, science fiction, urban decay
Will Self was recently interviewed on BBC Radio 4 by Mariella Frostrup about his admiration for J.G. Ballard’s work. Here’s a transcript of that interview.
By Simon Sellars • Jan 25th, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Shepperton, WWII, autobiography
Still from Hari Kunzru’s interview with J.G. Ballard. © Waterstone’s Books Quarterly.
Waterstones is featuring a video interview with JGB, conducted by Hari Kunzru to promote Miracles of Life. There are no surprises here. Kunzru asks Ballard about the relationship of Miracles to JGB’s semi-autobiographical novels, Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, and […]
By Simon Sellars • Jan 20th, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Lead Story, Shanghai, WWII, autobiography, features
The Times is featuring an extract from Ballard’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life. There’s also an accompanying interview, in which it’s revealed that Ballard has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
By Simon Sellars • Dec 16th, 2007 •
Category: Shanghai, WWII, autobiography
From the BBC World Service:
World Book Club - J.G. Ballard (Radio)
(24 January, 2008)
January’s guest is J.G. Ballard talking about his novel Empire Of The Sun with Harriet Gilbert and a studio audience. Each month an internationally renowned author discusses their most celebrated novel with presenter Harriet Gilbert. To be part of the audience and […]
By Dominika Oramus • Nov 13th, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, Salvador Dali, Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, William Burroughs, academia, features, science fiction, surrealism
by Dominika Oramus
World’s first hydrogen bomb explosion, Eniwetok Atoll, 1952.
Dominika Oramus teaches Brit.Lit. professionally at the University of Warsaw. The following is Part Two of the introduction to Grave New World: The Decline of the West in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard, her post-doctoral thesis. Grave New World currently exists as a (very) limited […]
By Simon Sellars • Oct 2nd, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Shepperton, deep time, travel
Above: the Ballard family’s former house, now lit up in the colours of capitalism. Photo: Rick McGrath.
“Do you believe in synchronicity?” Andy asked. “That’s the 10 o’clock signal for today’s national anniversary. Sirens are blowing all over the country right now.” He leaned in, conspiratorially. “It was precisely 70 years ago today the Japanese attacked […]
By Pedro Groppo • Sep 14th, 2007 •
Category: David Cronenberg, Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, YouTube, autobiography, features, film, filmography, flying
Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun (more at YouTube.)
by Pedro Groppo
EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard
Starring: Christian Bale, John Malkovich
Whereas the sensibilities of J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg, who directed Crash (1996), seem to overlap and complement each other, one would be hard-pressed […]
By Pippa Tandy • Aug 27th, 2007 •
Category: Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, deep time, features, film, filmography
ABOVE: Youtube uplink for Shanghai Jim (BBC Bookmark, 1991; produced by James Runcie).
by Pippa Tandy
SHANGHAI JIM (1991)
Director/Producer: James Runcie
Executive Producer: Nigel Williams
Starring: J.G. Ballard, Michael Troughton, Hans Gebruers
See here for a transcript of J.G. Ballard’s commentary from the film.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS about the lives and works of artists have many different functions. They may describe their […]
By Simon Sellars • Aug 18th, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, YouTube, autobiography, film
Over on BallardoTube, the “China Odyssey” doco on the making of Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun has appeared. Ballard features prominently.
Don’t forget part two.
[ thanks Pedro! ]
By Simon Sellars • Feb 5th, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, media landscape, politics, short stories
Left: Ballard’s author pic from the Varsity student newspaper (image & PDF courtesy Rick McGrath).
Mike Holliday has uploaded J.G. Ballard — A Collector’s Guide, an in-depth information resource designed “as a ‘helping hand’ to anyone interested in collecting books, stories, and other material by the British author J. G. Ballard”. There’s a lot of […]
By Ben • Sep 20th, 2006 •
Category: Shanghai, consumerism, humour, interviews, psychology, short stories, surrealism, terrorism
JG Ballard. Photo: Paul Murphy.
On 14 September 2006 JG Ballard gave a reading from his new novel, Kingdom Come, and talked to Robert McCrum of the Observer at the Institute of Education, London — the evening was presented by Blackwell. Looking rather dapper and displaying a sharpness and wit that puts people half his age […]
By Simon Sellars • Sep 16th, 2006 •
Category: Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, bibliography, media landscape, surrealism
OPENING LINE:
“Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund.”
There’s not much left to say about the autobiographical Empire, perhaps Ballard’s most popular book and the work that catapulted […]
By timc • Mar 5th, 2006 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, film, media landscape, non-fiction
From the Guardian, Saturday March 4, 2006.
“Look back at Empire
JG Ballard waited 40 years before writing about his experiences in a Japanese internment camp. Here he remembers how Hollywood hijacked his childhood memories to create a deeply moving film.
Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades […]
By Simon Sellars • Feb 23rd, 2006 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shanghai, WWII, non-fiction
Over at the J.G. Ballard Yahoo Group, prominent Ballard scholar David Pringle informs us that the new 2006 paperback printing of JGB’s Empire of the Sun (the “Harper Collins Perennial Classic” edition) contains a new interview with JGB at the back of the book. As David says, “This covers mainly old autobiographical ground, about […]
By Simon Sellars • Oct 7th, 2005 •
Category: David Cronenberg, Shanghai, archival, censorship, consumerism, dystopia, film, gated communities, psychology, psychopathology, science fiction, sexual politics, television
Photo by Simon Sellars
This transcript was first published in Sub Dee Magazine (no. 5 Summer 1997), a print project I was involved in long before Ballardian. At the time, J.G. Ballard’s career was in the ascendancy after what was perceived to be an average period in his writing. Cocaine Nights had just been released and […]