Ballardian

Jeannette Baxter, organiser of last year’s Ballard conference at the University of East Anglia, is the editor of a new critical volume on Ballard. It’s due for release in September 2008, to be published by Continuum Books as part of its Contemporary Critical Perspectives series.

Here’s the info (via the JGB Yahoo list):

Contemporary Critical Perspectives: J.G. Ballard

Series Editors: Jeannette Baxter, Sebastian Groes, Sean Matthews

Editor: Jeannette Baxter

J.G. Ballard is one of the most significant British writers of the contemporary period. His award-winning novels are stock features of school and university reading lists, yet the appeal of Ballard’s idiosyncratic imagination is such that his work also enjoys something of a cult status with the reading public. The hugely successful cinematic adaptations of Empire of the Sun (Spielberg, 1987) and Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) further confirm Ballard’s unique place within the literary, cultural and popular imaginations.

Although J. G. Ballard is known primarily as a novelist, he is also the author of over one hundred short stories, a number of which have been adapted for television and theatre. For the first time, Contemporary Critical Perspectives: J. G. Ballard places a discussion of Ballard’s short stories alongside readings of the major novels in order to explore issues of form, narrative and experimentation.

Another defining element of this volume is its coverage of Ballard’s extensive catalogue of cultural journalism. Over the course of five decades, Ballard has written for publications as various as The Daily Telegraph, Playboy, the Guardian, Time Out, New Worlds, The Times and Vogue. Contemporary Critical Perspectives: J. G. Ballard is the first study of its kind to explore Ballard’s significance as a cultural commentator, and to investigate the relationship between his creative and critical writings.

Whilst offering fresh readings of dominant and recurring themes in Ballard’s writing, including history, sexuality, violence, consumer capitalism, and urban space, this edition of Contemporary Critical Perspectives engages with hitherto unexplored questions of post 9/11 politics, terrorism, neo-imperialism, science, morality and ethics.

Contents:

General Introduction: Jeannette Baxter (UEA)

Biography/Chronology: Jeannette Baxter

Chapter 1: Brian Baker(Lancaster) ‘The Geometry of the Space Age: J. G. Ballard’s short fiction and science fiction of the 1960s’: a reassessment of J. G. Ballard’s early work.’

Chapter 2: Jake Huntley (UEA) ‘Re-reading The Atrocity Exhibition.’

Chapter 3: Sebastian Groes (Liverpool Hope), ‘From Shanghai to Shepperton: Place and Space in the Work of J. G. Ballard.’

Chapter 4: Corin Depper (Kingston), ‘Death at Work: The Cinematic Imagination of J. G. Ballard.’

Chapter 5: Umberto Rossi Mind is the Battlefield: Reading Ballard’s ‘Life Trilogy’ as War Literature

Chapter 6: David Pringle, ‘The genres of J. G. Ballard’s non-fiction.’

Chapter 7: Jeannette Baxter (UEA), ‘Visions of Europe in Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes’

Chapter 8: Philip Tew (Brunel), ‘The possibilities of sacrifice, the certainties of trauma: J. G. Ballard’s Postmillennial Fiction.’

An interview with J.G. Ballard by Jeannette Baxter