http://www.ballardian.com/home-and-a-grave Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:27:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.ballardian.com/home-and-a-grave/comment-page-1#comment-875 Ian Christie Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:14:25 +0000 http://www.ballardian.com/home-and-a-grave/#comment-875 Interesting analysis - thanks for the essay. I had not read TUDC in this way and there is plenty to think about here. Three points: 1) Ambiguity: isn't Ballard both commenting on the impossibility of a total vision and communion that is not in some sense 'fascistic' and also exploring the pleasures of fantasies - and we all have them - of completeness (of power, love, ecstasy, meaning, merging with favourite people and places, with earth and sky)? 2) The temptations of religion: Blake is both a delusional man-god and also (it seems to me) a Ballardian variant on the Christian mythology of 'heaven coming down to earth' in a new creation, and of Christ as the 'second Adam' and a fusion of father and son, creator and redeemer... 3) Echoes of another riverside visionary: JGB has made reference elsewhere to the parallels between his haunt in Shepperton and Stanley Spencer's at Cookham up the Thames. I see TUDC as Ballard's prose response and counterpart to Spencer's painting of The Resurrection at Cookham, in which the End of Days occurs by the Thames, with the dead rising from the graves and Christ overseeing departures to paradise on the riverside. Interesting analysis – thanks for the essay. I had not read TUDC in this way and there is plenty to think about here.
Three points:
1) Ambiguity: isn’t Ballard both commenting on the impossibility of a total vision and communion that is not in some sense ‘fascistic’ and also exploring the pleasures of fantasies – and we all have them – of completeness (of power, love, ecstasy, meaning, merging with favourite people and places, with earth and sky)?
2) The temptations of religion: Blake is both a delusional man-god and also (it seems to me) a Ballardian variant on the Christian mythology of ‘heaven coming down to earth’ in a new creation, and of Christ as the ’second Adam’ and a fusion of father and son, creator and redeemer…
3) Echoes of another riverside visionary: JGB has made reference elsewhere to the parallels between his haunt in Shepperton and Stanley Spencer’s at Cookham up the Thames. I see TUDC as Ballard’s prose response and counterpart to Spencer’s painting of The Resurrection at Cookham, in which the End of Days occurs by the Thames, with the dead rising from the graves and Christ overseeing departures to paradise on the riverside.

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