RE/Search #8/9: J. G. Ballard - Softcover

Vale, V.

4.25

482 ratings by Goodreads

9780965046978: RE/Search #8/9: J. G. Ballard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965046974 ISBN 13: 9780965046978

Publisher: Re/Search Publications, 1984

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

This is the most comprehensive introduction to this visionary writer, the William Burroughs of England. J.G. Ballard finally achieved world recognition when Steven Spielberg filmed his autobiography (childhood til age 15) in Empire of the Sun. But Ballard has been a visionary iconoclast since the 50s, beginning with his trilogy of disaster novels, The Burning World, The Drowned World, and The Crystal World, and most notoriously, his automobile death-wish classic, Crash, about the psychopathology of the car crash. He predicted Ronald Reagan as president 15 years before it happened! This volume contains long interviews, including one by soundtrack composer/SPK founder Graeme Revell, stories, a biography, bibliography, and many provocative quotations. Ballard is possibly the most futuristic philosopher of the 20th century.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Back Cover:

Highly acclaimed as a science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard far transcends that label. Ballard has delineated an updated mythology and philosophy coherent for our times, ranging from his investigation of the psychosexual significance of the car crash (in Crash) to the barbarism latent in a new vertical condominium (High-Rise). In this strikingly illustrated volume, encompassing interviews and a wealth of rare selections from every aspect of Ballards's career, introduce yourself to the advanced thinking of a major contemporary writer.

J.G. BALLARD #8/9 J.G. Ballard has initiated a dazzling scope of clearly relevant attitudes, analysis, ideas and scenarios. His forward-looking philosophy embodies a comprehensive understanding of how the instant mass media (with their stylized fabrications of "news events," "news figures," and "lifestyles") have changed everything that signifies "meaning" in our lives. He has extrapolated upon the effects of widespread home computers and video recorders on our identities and personal histories. He is concerned with how we are going to change.

J.G. Ballard's work destroys the barriers between science and art; advertising and literature; politics and pop culture; ecological catastrophe and the Space Age; television and the new styles of sociopathic conformism; et al. He has identified and imaginatively expanded upon the new mythologies and symbolism of the imminent future. Sex, technology, advertising, this dying planet, increasingly innovative pathological behavior, the parallel world of the lives and deaths of famous celebrities-all intermingle in Ballard's cool explications of what is really going on.

The characters in Ballard's scenarios exemplify the problems of achieving a unique identity in a mass culture world-often through madness or crime, always through the elaboration of obsession. In an age of cliched cynicism, these characters possess ideals which they strive to fulfill, however strangely. Consistently, Ballard's writing reflects one central investigation: of the meaning of freedom in a world obsessed with control and obedience to the past . . .

Freedom, for Ballard, is synonymous with the imagination. And it is no accident that he acknowledges Surrealism, with its emphasis on the unconscious and the importance of dreams, as a major influence: "I am interested in the Surrealists altogether, because I am a great believer in the need of imagination to transform everything, otherwise we'll have to take the world as we find it, and I don't think we should. We should re-make the world."

At a time when nobody believes that the future will be "better," it's definitely time to understand why . . . and how we got that way.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.