Discussion
I remember when I was a bit younger having a fascination for books written by J G Ballard.
The recent accident in Wales, where the car wasn't found for 48 hours reminded me of one of J G Ballard's books called Concrete Island.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
Not everyone's cup of tea, but anyone else read any of his stuff?
The recent accident in Wales, where the car wasn't found for 48 hours reminded me of one of J G Ballard's books called Concrete Island.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
Not everyone's cup of tea, but anyone else read any of his stuff?
Slow.Patrol said:
I remember when I was a bit younger having a fascination for books written by J G Ballard.
The recent accident in Wales, where the car wasn't found for 48 hours reminded me of one of J G Ballard's books called Concrete Island.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
Not everyone's cup of tea, but anyone else read any of his stuff?
I read alot of his stuff about thirty years ago. Some of it was brilliant. Some of it freaked me out. The recent accident in Wales, where the car wasn't found for 48 hours reminded me of one of J G Ballard's books called Concrete Island.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
Not everyone's cup of tea, but anyone else read any of his stuff?
Yertis said:
I read alot of his stuff about thirty years ago. Some of it was brilliant. Some of it freaked me out.
Yeah. Some of it is pretty f
ked up in a Quentin Taratino way. It makes you wonder what is going on in someone's mind to think of something that is so warped. Mind you, he was in a Japanese camp as a young child during WW2, so that probably didn't do him much good.
Ballard had a lot of left-field ideas and was great at picking up the downsides of supposedly-better modern life (a bit like Douglas Coupland only less mainstream).
But the people in his novels were unconvincing and flat - vehicles for his ideas. Perhaps because he started out a a sci fi writer where that tends to be par for the course. His dalogue in particular was terrible. No-one ever spoke like a Ballard character.
I enjoyed his books hugely all the same because he was such a distinctive voice who could be relied upon for a view that contrasted with just about everyone else. But the best books to my mind were also the least typical - his autobiographical novels Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women.
His actual autobiography Miracles of Life is also great - his life was such a weird mix of the suburban and the catastrophic that it helps you to understand his fiction quite a lot better.
But the people in his novels were unconvincing and flat - vehicles for his ideas. Perhaps because he started out a a sci fi writer where that tends to be par for the course. His dalogue in particular was terrible. No-one ever spoke like a Ballard character.
I enjoyed his books hugely all the same because he was such a distinctive voice who could be relied upon for a view that contrasted with just about everyone else. But the best books to my mind were also the least typical - his autobiographical novels Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women.
His actual autobiography Miracles of Life is also great - his life was such a weird mix of the suburban and the catastrophic that it helps you to understand his fiction quite a lot better.
I was going to mention his auto bio which I read much more recently, it does give personal context to his work and is an interesting read in its own right. There is also a short story – I forget its name and which anthology it's in now – which is like a first draft of Empire of the Sun and changed the way I feel about that book. A bit like how some of Twain's 'Life on the Mississippi' informs reading of Huck Fin etc.
dontlookdown said:
Ballard had a lot of left-field ideas and was great at picking up the downsides of supposedly-better modern life (a bit like Douglas Coupland only less mainstream).
But the people in his novels were unconvincing and flat - vehicles for his ideas. Perhaps because he started out a a sci fi writer where that tends to be par for the course. His dalogue in particular was terrible. No-one ever spoke like a Ballard character.
I enjoyed his books hugely all the same because he was such a distinctive voice who could be relied upon for a view that contrasted with just about everyone else. But the best books to my mind were also the least typical - his autobiographical novels Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women.
His actual autobiography Miracles of Life is also great - his life was such a weird mix of the suburban and the catastrophic that it helps you to understand his fiction quite a lot better.
The Kindness of Women is brilliant and gives big clues as to how his life influenced his books, outlook and characters. It's one of the best books I've ever read. I have a lot of his other books too and although he's often described as a sci-fi writer, he dealt with inner space, rather than outer space, and in a unique way. But the people in his novels were unconvincing and flat - vehicles for his ideas. Perhaps because he started out a a sci fi writer where that tends to be par for the course. His dalogue in particular was terrible. No-one ever spoke like a Ballard character.
I enjoyed his books hugely all the same because he was such a distinctive voice who could be relied upon for a view that contrasted with just about everyone else. But the best books to my mind were also the least typical - his autobiographical novels Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women.
His actual autobiography Miracles of Life is also great - his life was such a weird mix of the suburban and the catastrophic that it helps you to understand his fiction quite a lot better.
That said, he's a bit like the Porsche 911 of authors - each book (particularly the latter ones) almost seems like an evolution of what's gone before, slightly changed but very familiar.
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