This is an excellent read, and very persuasive. Not massively comforting, mind…
I was Ballard’s editor for a while in the 70s, including Crash and High Rise, and I’ve never quite got over the sense of unease.
https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/why-we-are-living-jg-ballard-s-world
mikethep says
———>
Martin Hairnet says
I read Cocaine Nights when I moved to Spain. I enjoyed it, but I remember thinking that his depiction of a dystopian expat community on the Costa del Sol didn’t go far enough! Do you know anything about the inspiration for that book? Did he live in Spain at all?
A good read. Thanks for sharing.
mikethep says
Not as far as I know – he lived in a semi in Shepperton for most of his life. I imagine that what he knew, or assumed, about expats in Spain fitted perfectly with his worldview.
Arthur Cowslip says
That was a great read, thanks! Definitely not massively comforting: “His vision of the world was cheerfully bleak, and relentlessly anti-human: society as a thin and brittle construct that would always give way to a cruel and animalistic human nature.” Brrr.
To my shame, I’ve never actually read any J G Ballard. I’m more of a movie person. I liked Empire of the Sun the movie (the inauguration of Spielberg’s mature phase) and watched a little bit of Crash but found it too gaudy.
Any tips on which book to start with if I am new to his stuff?
mikethep says
He’s not someone to binge on…haven’t read them for years, but I loved his early novels – Wind from Nowhere, Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World, all of which seemed like SF at the time but probably don’t any more. No Ballardian will talk to you if you haven’t read the middle-period stuff – Crash, High Rise, Concrete Island – which was where he broke into the mainstream (leaving Empire of the Sun to one side). In my view he descended into self-parody in his later years, but Cocaine Nights is a good read. His short stories are worth a look – Disaster Area, Vermilion Sands etc.
Martin Hairnet says
I just found Rushing to Paradise on my shelves. Forgotten all about it. Need to read it. Here’s a bit of the back cover blurb: “Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists wins control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their own into a much darker place.”
Arthur Cowslip says
My grammar radar is stumbling over that phrase “a group of environmentalists wins control”… should it not be “a group of environmentalists WIN control”?
I could be wrong… It has been known… Or maybe both ways are correct?
mikethep says
Well, neither would get you cast out of my inner circle of grammar Nazis, but wins feels right (righter) to me.
Arthur Cowslip says
“Inner circle of grammar Nazis”! Ha ha. Forgive me if I don’t rush to become a member of that club. š
nigelthebald says
“Group” is singular, so I’m with @mikethep on this one.
Blue Boy says
The verb relates back to āgroupā not āenvironmentalistsā so it is indeed āa group…winsā. Agree, it sounds wrong though.
nigelthebald says
I disagree – it sounds right š
MC Escher says
Agree to agree with nigel :). I always automatically correct it in my head when I hear it on the news (tut, BBC, tut). Although if everyone keeps misusing it eventually it wiil be correct, such is the way with a living language. Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it though.
Arthur Cowslip says
I seem to be in the minority here. Well, screw the lot of youse. I am goings to wins back the control of my own grammar, so there. š
mikethep says
Welcome to the Inner Circle. š
moseleymoles says
I am very jealous of your former life @mikethep as I am a massive Ballard fanboy and am recently working my through his novels for the second or third time (he has passed on since the last time, so my shelves are now fixed sadly.
I have had this thought exactly weeks before. The Virus would fit perfectly in his early environmental trilogy of Drowned World/Drought/Crystal World in which ecological change impacts on ‘normal human life’ on a profound and planet-wide level. These are of course usually now read as hugely prescient takes on the climate emergency.
@arthur-cowslip if you are a bit daunted by the uber transgressive stuff then I would start with High-Rise: a recognisable London, the key Ballardian theme of the thin veneer of civilised society being peeled away, and how the adaptable embrace the new forms of being … sound familiar. He did start to write the same novel over and over in his last period so I wouldn’t go later than Cocaine Nights before you’re hooked.
Empire of the Sun is also a great place to start as its thinly veiled autobiography of his life as boy interned by the Japanese in WW2. I have just shelled out for the gorgeous Folio Society edition (ok in their sale, but dropped Ā£15 on a book I already owned).
Under no circumstances read The Atrocity Exhibition before you are thorough immersed. Just reread it and though brilliant is tough going. Does contain while I want to F++K Ronald Reagan and The Assassination of JFK Considered As a Downhill Motor Race.
Arthur Cowslip says
Sounds good, thanks for the tip. The film of High Rise intrigued me as well so might give it a go.
The author that came to mind when this whole coronavirus adventure kicked off is John Wyndham! I just recently read The Kraken Wakes, and there’s a lot in that about humanity’s inability to recognise a threat to their modern, comfortable complacency… then good black humour detail about how the government and the media handle the situation… and arriving at a desolate (but optimistic) view of the world as society breaks down.
mikethep says
Yes, good call. John Christopher’s The Death of Grass is probably worth another look too. Or you could just plump for P G Wodehouse, think that’s where I’m heading.
Tony G says
Yes, it’s Wodehouse for me too. I have read four Jeeves and Wooster over the past few days and I have another lined up for this evening. I’ve read them all countless times but at the moment Aunt Dahlia, Gussie Fink-Nottle and even Spode inhabit a world that it’s good to escape into for a while.
Black Celebration says
When I read PG Wodehouse I can very much picture a young Hugh Laurie as Bertie but I imagine a much older man as Jeeves i.e. not Stephen Fry. No disrespect to Mr Fry intended.
mikethep says
I’m a big fan of the Michael Hordern/Richard Briers Jeeves and Wooster. They were on the radio in the 70s, and were my introduction to that wonderful world. Supporting cast includes Maurice Denham, Paul Eddington, David Jason, John Le Mesurier, Miriam Margolyes, Jonathan Cecil, Liza Goddard and Patrick Cargill. Beat that.
Black Celebration says
Sounds wonderful.
count jim moriarty says
They get repeated occasionally on Radio 4 Extra. Worth keeping an eye on their schedules.
Wilson Wilson says
I started reading The Kraken Wakes about a month ago (2 for a fiver in Fopp) but since this has all kicked off Iām finding it hard to go back to. The coronavirus might finish off my taste for bleak sci-fi for good! Iād second Mikeās recommendation of The Death of Grass, though.
mikethep says
@moseleymoles it was an odd time, working on Crash, High Rise and Concrete Island, then toiling out to Shepperton to sit down with this mild-mannered chap and discuss his nightmarish visions with him. I was so spooked by Crash that I used to lock the MS in my desk at night in case any sensitive young souls (or the cleaners!) caught sight of it. I came up with the title for Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories – he was going down another route which didn’t feel quite right and I persuaded him this was the one. Quite proud of that.
moseleymoles says
I am almost fainting. Next you’re going to tell me that Philip K Dick used to drop by whenever he was in the UK.
mikethep says
Sadly no.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
We have a God walking amongst us! Did I ever tell you my keynote speech “Steel, Recycling Will Save The Planet” at the Metal Packaging Conference in Miami, 1991 was seminal?
Martin Hairnet says
It must have been ironic.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I’ll have you know Barack came up afterwards and said “That’s it, my mind’s made up, I’m into politics now, watch out world – here I come”.
ps how many times has he contacted me? Answers on the back of the smallest scrunched up paper you could ever ever imagine, that’s how many. One day they’ll write a movie about me. “The Guy Who Sold Tin Cans”. Daniel Craig has already counted himself in but I’m more looking for a younger Brad Pitt
Martin Hairnet says
Jim Broadbent is available.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I believe Mr Broadbent is dead so he couldn’t possibly play me.. errr
retropath2 says
Cripes, donāt tell him, heās still accepting work
Barry Blue says
Broadbent not brownbread!
Freddy Steady says
Like the sound of āHaving a wonderful timeā and āThe Intensive Care Unit.ā Are they recommended here by anyone?
mikethep says
Both distilled essence of Ballard. There’s a dramatisation of Having a Wonderful Time on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/tLTNtUE-uV0
If anybody really wants a deep dive, there’s this.
http://www.ballardian.com/
ipesky says
If you are not regular listeners to the marvellous āBacklistedā podcast, you should be. So much love for books and authors, always presented with real intelligence and wit. And there is a great edition on J. G. Ballard (7/11/16). Other worthwhile editions on Warren Zevonās biography, and another on Beatles books.
mikethep says
And some scamp has uploaded a load of Ballard audiobooks to YouTube. You have to go to actual YouTube to see the rest in the sidebar.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
YouTube is like an Eel Market? Well, blow me right down. Right then just follow these four billion links and I’ll… It wasn’t me, it was him