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Early JGB soundbites
Author: Simon Sellars • Jan 28th, 2006 •Category: Ballardosphere
Recently, for the first time, I read Ballard’s debut novel from 1962, The Wind from Nowhere, having resisted it for so long because I could never stand those early Ballard short stories like ‘Now Zero’.
Of course, Ballard disowns Nowhere, and it’s not hard to see why, with its torturously long sentences and empty symbolisms, and the characters voicing pointless long expositions when ’showing not telling’ would have spared the reader some degree of pain…all this and more from a man who was to bloom into the master of sparse, laser-sharp, all-killer-no-filler writing.
Still, it *is* Ballard; all the classic archetypes are in place (except for a ‘Vaughan’ figure): the bitch-as-catalyst; the arrogant, muscular suitor threatening the husband’s masculinity…
…and it does have what must be one of the very earliest truly classic Ballard quotes, one that ranks with the stuff collected in Vale’s book, a quote that both presages future events and qualifies current ones.
A JGB ’soundbite’ as David Pringle calls them…
On p112 of The Wind From Nowhere (penguin edition, 1974 reprint), Ballard writes: “Remember, it’s not enough to make history – you’ve got to arrange for someone to record it for you”.
That’s gold. And from 1962, too.
Is this the first classic JGB quote?
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Simon Sellars
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Yes, I’ll bet it is. Fucking brilliant too.