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defrogSo JG Ballard has died.
And you’d expect me to write something about him, given that he’s a legend in dystopian science fiction and all. Except that I’ve never really been into Ballard.
I’ve only read one book by him 15 years ago – Concrete Island, a sort of urban version of Robinson Crusoe – and I didn’t really get much out of it. I suppose I struggled with the idea that someone could really be stranded on a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a freeway intersection. Maybe I supposed to take it metaphorically, but it didn’t really work for me. I’d re-read it but my copy is buried in a basement in East Tennessee somewhere.
Then I saw Cronenberg's adaptation of Crash and was one of only 23 people on the planet who thought it was really good, so since then I’ve been willing to try another Ballard book, but the only books I ever see by him on the HK racks nowadays are Cocaine Nights and Millennium People, neither of which really appeal to me if the back-cover synopsis is any indication.
Still, like with most recently-deceased authors, we're likely to see a lot of his books reissued in the next month or two, so maybe I’ll give Ballard another chance. If anyone has any Ballard they’d like to recommend, feel free.
Maybe the next one,
This is dF
And you’d expect me to write something about him, given that he’s a legend in dystopian science fiction and all. Except that I’ve never really been into Ballard.
I’ve only read one book by him 15 years ago – Concrete Island, a sort of urban version of Robinson Crusoe – and I didn’t really get much out of it. I suppose I struggled with the idea that someone could really be stranded on a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a freeway intersection. Maybe I supposed to take it metaphorically, but it didn’t really work for me. I’d re-read it but my copy is buried in a basement in East Tennessee somewhere.
Then I saw Cronenberg's adaptation of Crash and was one of only 23 people on the planet who thought it was really good, so since then I’ve been willing to try another Ballard book, but the only books I ever see by him on the HK racks nowadays are Cocaine Nights and Millennium People, neither of which really appeal to me if the back-cover synopsis is any indication.
Still, like with most recently-deceased authors, we're likely to see a lot of his books reissued in the next month or two, so maybe I’ll give Ballard another chance. If anyone has any Ballard they’d like to recommend, feel free.
Maybe the next one,
This is dF
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on 2009-04-20 05:59 am (UTC)I've read CRASH.
It's a good short story... but the problem is, it's a a novel. Ballard achieves this feat by repeating many of the same or near identical metaphors or passages over and over and over and over...
To my mind, his short stories and novellas are more worth your time.
I've had the sequel to EMPIRE OF THE SUN sitting in my bookshelf for years, but I've never read it.
-- JF