Iain Sinclair’s Ballard Biography
Author: Simon Sellars • Aug 18th, 2007 •Category: Ballardosphere, Chris Petit, David Cronenberg, Iain Sinclair, Michael Moorcock, film, psychogeography
I reread Iain Sinclair’s BFI book on Cronenberg’s Crash
Imagine the poor customer, keen on the film and wishing to know more about it and its director, picking this up and discovering that discussion of Crash, the film, takes up barely over half the book.
That’s fine by me, though, because I find it an absorbing read. I’m starting to think of it as the middle section of a Ballard biography that’s yet to be written. There are plenty of academic volumes on Ballard, but all the same (and with all due respect to those previous volumes) what we really need is a proper JGB biography written by someone with all the right connections, someone who has imaginatively fused with the subject’s interior life.
Someone like Iain Sinclair.
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It’s funny that you mention Iain Sinclair’s contribution to the BFI’s Modern Classics series.
As an undergraduate I was steeped in a dissertation discussing posthumanism in the films of David Cronenberg; Sinclair’s text appeared to be the only study that emphasised my research interests, although they were directed mostly towards Ballard’s fiction. At the time, I was disappointed, but it’s a great book.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Chris Petit, author, columnist and director of the great ‘Radio On’ (1980). I caught ‘Radio On’ on a limited run by the BFI about two years ago (I think it’s now available on DVD, region 1) and was completely blown away.
Sinclair takes a peek at the film and looks at the ways in which it distills the mood and tone of some of Ballard’s work. In many ways I think ‘Radio On’ is a great pastiche, set to post-punk electronic music of the era. Well worth checking out.
I agree — Radio On is superb.