Ballardian

Here are Ballard’s picks for rival papers [thanks, John C.].

In the Observer, his best books of the year:

The most enjoyable book was St Peter’s by Keith Miller (Profile), a witty and entertaining account of the most famous church in the world, still standing firm against the tides of tourism that swirl around it. As Miller makes clear, St Peter’s has always been far more than a church. The most disturbing book of the year was Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray (Allen Lane). This is Gray’s most powerful argument yet against the scientific idealists who think they can blueprint a benevolent end-state utopia. Their attempt, Gray argues, has led to the ruined utopias we see around us, and the return of repressed religious belief in its most frightening form. A brilliant polemic, probably best read on the steps of St Peter’s.

J.G. Ballard

And in the Guardian, his Chrissie picks:

London: City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair (Penguin), was last year’s Christmas treat in hardback, a wonderful compendium put together by our psychogeographer-in-chief, and now out in paperback. Strange dreams of a vanishing London die and are reborn on every page. Ghosts haunt the alleys of Sinclair’s maze-like mind, and I couldn’t help thinking of the Warsaw ghetto as he paced Whitechapel and Spitalfields.

This Christmas I will read The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power by David Owen (Politico’s). Our former foreign secretary launches a scathing attack on the organ-grinder and his eager monkey for their conduct of the Iraq war, a combination of arrogance and incompetence.

For next Christmas, God willing, I have already reserved The Architecture of Parking by Simon Henley (Thames & Hudson), a hymn to the true temples of the automobile age, multistorey car parks. Those canted decks are trying to lead us to another dimension . . .

J.G. Ballard.

Beautiful. Ballard’s the master of the pithy review, condensed into a paragraph or two. (And thanks to Mike Bonsall, we know he honed the style very early on…) ‘Reading John Gray on the steps of St Peters’ is genius. And fabulous to see him mention Henley’s car park book, which I also want. Satisfying, too, as I always knew Ballard would like the book.

Note how there’s no ‘literature’ in these picks. No doubt the novel, for Ballard, is still rooted in the 19th century…