Comments on: New Ballard video interview

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:50:32 +0000

sean, ‘escapement’ may very well be the first, i don’t really care myself, just pointing it out… i see your point, though, very interesting. myself, i tend to agree, but like i say, i don’t go back that far. instead, i see kingdom come as a return to the ‘culture jamming’ aesthetic of atrocity exhibition, i’ve written on this, it just needs more development before i post it here on the site…

in any case, ballard is always doubling back on himself, reiterating, rebirthing, repeating, restating…he’s done it right from the start. as i posted a while back in the bowels of this site, i even see similarities with the death scene in his student story, ‘the violent noon’ (1951), and a remarkable scene of carnage in crash.

multiple personas, identities, personalities are commonplace these days, mediated by cheap technology and virtual communities and digested via palatable marketing, not so common (or recognised, in a mascult sense) in the early 60s, when ballard was hitting his stride…marking his foresight as all the more remarkable…

as for liddle, he just doesn’t get it full stop, he’s far too busy deploying the working-class-hero gambit.

By: Phil Huntley

Phil Huntley — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:22:45 +0000

My girlfriend works at Waterstones and was therefore able to nab an early proof of the book for me back in December. I actually picked up a copy of the finished copy in my local bookstore last Monday so it’s finally hit the shelves here in the UK. The proof did have a lot of errors and the photos from JG’s archive were not well reproduced…

By: sean ashton

sean ashton — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:38:15 +0000

Ah, I stand corrected. And maybe I was being a bit rhetorical by saying that he’s come ‘full circle’. I think what I really mean is that, in terms of that mock-bourgeois tone, ‘Escapement’ is up there with anything he’s written. And so original, too – I mean in the way that the magnitude of this vague cosmic event is dealt with in an entirely domestic setting: a husband and his wife just watching telly. Like an episode of Eastenders. It’s hilarious. HG Wells does a similar thing in ‘The New Accelerator’, which is almost as funny.

On the subject of Ballard as a ‘middle-class snob’, maybe Liddle just didn’t get the humour, didn’t get the ‘mock’ part of the mock-bourgeois tone. Having just finished the tetralogy that culminates in ‘Kingdom Come’, I think can see the problem that some readers would have with the way that humour is deployed in these books. The reason, I think, why some readers just don’t get the humour, is that the novels are too long. There’s so much methodical plotting and narrative teleology, that the deadpan delivery gets lost. Much of Ballard’s humour relies on ‘reporting’ something absurd in a super-objective tone. But this objectivity often gets absorbed into the objectivity of the narrative teleology – how he gets the reader from one thing to another etc. For me, he got it just right in High Rise, when he opens with the description of the main character eating his neighbour’s Alsatian. And the deadpan humour is integrated better into the structure of this novel – maybe because its shorter than those that comprise the tetralogy.

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:56:26 +0000

Intriguing — how do you mean that Ballard has come full circle? I think something similar, but I’m not sure I go back that far to ‘Escapement’…

And ‘mock-bourgeois’ is a great way to describe it, which is why it really irritates me when people describe Ballard as a ‘middle-class snob’ — as Rod Liddle did in his tirade against Kingdom Come.

PS: it’s pedantic I know, but just out of interest, there’s debate about whether ‘Escapement’ or ‘Prima Belladonna’ is his first story. They both came out in December 1956 in different magazines, but I’m told ‘Prima Belladonna’ was probably slightly ahead in hitting the racks.

By: sean ashton

sean ashton — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:17:52 +0000

I only learned of JG Ballard’s illness last night on Radio 3, in the interview on Night Waves. It’s a real shame that recent interviews with Ballard have tended to retail the same, stock themes – the psychopathology of middle class life; the feeling that (to paraphrase Ballard) the normality of things could be overturned at any moment; that no one is in control; that bourgeois English politeness conceals violent pathologies – though it’s of course good to see writers like Kunzru promoting Ballard’s work in this way. What fascinates me about Ballard is the way he handles transgressive ideas stylistically in his more recent work, in which the flatness of his tone is almost ‘mock-bourgeois’ (particularly in ‘Millennium People’). Compare the recent work to his first short story, ‘Escapement’, and you might say that stylistically he’s come full circle. It’s a shame that so many recent interviews concentrate on the content of his writing rather than its style. Maybe there’s still time…

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:21:29 +0000

Thanks Phil, that’s a great overview that has really stirred my appetite. How did you get your hands on a proof?

By: Phil Huntley

Phil Huntley — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:10:09 +0000

I believe that this interview was conducted in the Shepherds Bush apartment of Ballard’s partner Claire Walsh, so the books on display may well be hers.
Having just finished reading a proof of ‘Miracles of Life’ I can confirm that it a remarkably candid and revealing piece of work, pretty much what one would expect from JG.Not only does he discuss his longstanding relationship with Ms.Walsh (a generous,intelligent and supportive woman) but also his illness. Apparently the cancer spread from the prostrate to his spine and ribcage and Ballard placed himself in the care of one the leading cancer specialists who has made Ballard’s last few years as painless as possible, enabling him to embark on what may well be his last book. Although the author appears characteristically optimistic I fear that the recent cancellation of public events to promote his new work implies a worsening of his condition.Sadly hee may not have much longer…

By: Supervert

Supervert — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:24:54 +0000

Ballard never really seems to hit his stride in this piece. The whole thing is sort of forced. I found myself trying to read all the book titles on the shelf behind JGB…. Mostly art books: Giotto, Donald Judd, Art Since 1900, Ken Silver’s Esprit de Corps (I studied with Silver at college, which is why I recognize the spine of the book)… Are those copies of Miracles of Life on the shelf behind him?

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:40:56 +0000

To Andy, if you’re reading this (I don’t have your contact details): many thanks for fixing up the photo credit on the Waterstones page. You needn’t have mentioned the interview, as I was really just bringing attention to Paul’s photo, but it’s much appreciated in any case. Cheers and thanks for a great Ballard resource.

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:00:41 +0000

Do it, Peter. You have a forum, here — meaning, I’d willingly publish something that had something challenging to say on that score.

By: Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:47:57 +0000

In reading this point, the more I realize Ballard is somewhat like a literary Philip Glass (or vice versa). There are an incredible number of parallels in their work, despite the totally different medium. I should probably write about this at some point!