Ballardian

Here’s an interview with Ballard fom June this year. It was conducted by Alexander Gutzmer and published by Welt Online. As far as I know it completely bypassed the English-speaking world. Not even the hardest of the hardcore Ballardians that have crossed my path have referenced this (I only found it through my site stats, as Alexander links to ballardian.com via his blog).

It’s in German, which I don’t have, but even using Babel Fish I note that JGB at one stage recycles an old riff. In response to a Gutzmer question he says (and this quote is Babel-Fished, of course):

Beautiful inspires me much! I am not a pessimist. I see my books as warning. I am the man, who stands and calls at the road: Travel more slowly!

It’s a variant of his “I’m not a nihilist, I’m a moralist” disclaimer, usually expressed like this: “I’m the man on the side of the road with a sign saying ‘warning: dangerous bends ahead’”. You can see it in recent, pre-Gutzmer action here and here. (And why do I now feel like a complete and utter trainspotter?)

Bizarrely, Babel Fish translates “Ballard” as “Ball pool of broadcasting corporations”. Alright, this is totally beyond me, even allowing for the limitations of the software and my foreign-language skills. Can a German speaker explain this please?

Despite the translation static, I sense that Ballard is in good form:

Gutzmer: Many of your books criticize western capitalism. In “super-Cannes” about an inhabitant of an ultramodern industrial estate Amok runs. Wouldn’t the novel have to play in London?

Ball pool of broadcasting corporations: “super-Cannes” alludes to an existing Business-park, to Sophia Antipolis. That is in the long run not France, but a localless, completely global ensemble. There and work Americans, Briten, German, Frenchman live. But you are right: Today London is the probably most impressing financial center of the world. And loses thereby his character as English city.

Gutzmer: Also architecturally London changes by ever more wolkenkratzer its character…

Ball pool of broadcasting corporations: One tries to manhattanisieren London. I am not fundamental against high buildings, but in Manhattan they deprimieren me. Perhaps one needs a surrounding field of low buildings as a writer also. We want to always see the sky.

I like this passage, too:

Gutzmer: Such extreme driving in your books is cold-modernistic architecture.

Ball pool of broadcasting corporations: Yes, the modernism brings an emptiness with itself, which works dangerously. Were not the dictators 20 in vain. Century fascinates in such a way of it.

Gutzmer: Is it this emptiness, which causes the insanity in “super-Cannes”?

Ball pool of broadcasting corporations: The modernism lets dark impulses come upward, those into us schlummern. It gives no area to the unexplainable one, the Mysterioesen - and produces straight therefore a return to the Barbarei.

Gutzmer: Because it everything shows…

Ball pool of broadcasting corporations: Exactly. We need the Mysterioese, that little poetry. Who sees everything, becomes sad.

The mystery in Ballard’s work is all-important, I think. Something to aspire to, and also something to inspire…whereas draining the world of mystery is, as Ballard has implied before, a fascistic impulse.

The interview has a strong architectural bias, hardly surprising given Alexander Gutzmer’s interests: he has a blog called Antiflaneur with archipsychogeographical insights into German culture. In fact, Ballard really seems to respond to this line of probing and he’s far more responsive and expansive than in other recent mini-interviews I’ve read with him. Kudos, then, to Alexander for trying something different.

Perhaps he, too, felt liberated from the obligation that English journalists feel, whereby they are compelled to travel to Shepperton to interview JGB and comment on the motorway and Ballard’s suburban existence and the slightly run-down nature of Ballard’s house and Shanghai and Empire of the Sun etc etc… Which is a stereotypical way of writing about Ballard that ultimately doesn’t leave much room for actual engagement with the man’s ideas or current obsessions. (Alexander does mention Shanghai, but in the context of the future of global capitalism, an angle missed by some of Ballard’s interrogators, who can’t seem to see beyond a) England and/or b) Shanghai during war-time).