Much comment has been occasioned on the death of JG Ballard.
The following Ballard quote struck MC as interesting:
"We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass-merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the pre-empting of any original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality."
This, we think, could only be said by a science fiction writer, which Ballard was but which he somehow managed to escape the confines of and move into better company. His name, hideously, is now an adjective "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments."
Haven't we seen this movie? Ballard died about two years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and is now being feted in death as somehow making a genuine contribution to culture.
He was put in the same category as William S. Burroughs, who at least one half of MC considers to be genuinely evil. He also was the author of "Crash" which the same one half of MC had the misfortune of viewing, in all places, in Istanbul with Turkish subtitles (plot=people have erotic encounters in and around crashes!). The director was David Cronenberg who made the film "Naked Lunch," from the Burroughs signature novel. Sickness attracts sickness.
Still, MC refers readers to Jorge Luis Borges who could write fiction, who was far too familiar with reality (no need to make up failing eyesight and blindness, thanks!) to pretend it needed to be invented and who could actually write.
Click on the title of this post to read the Wiki entry (sorry) on Borges. It will at least get you started.
Correction: Ballard did not commit suicide and references in the post above to such have been deleted. MC regrets the error and thanks attentive readers for bringing this to their attention.
About Me
- John Hugh Gilmore
- Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, United States
- John Gilmore is the co-author of "Bachmannistan: Behind the Lines." He lives in St. Paul and is active in local, state and national conservative causes.
Staggeringly inaccurate. He didn't commit suicide. He lived out the last of his days with his partner while she cared for him.
ReplyDeleteIs the rest of your blog equally factually redundant?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23678206-details/Literary%2Bgiant%2BJG%2BBallard%2Bdies%2Bof%2Bcancer%2Baged%2B78/article.do
I am unfamiliar with this piece of news that Ballard's death was a suicide. What was your source?
ReplyDeleteDo you have a source for Ballard's suicide? Everything I have read has suggested his death was due to cancer.
ReplyDeleteI cant figure out if you are incoherent out of derangement or stupidity, but one thing is clear, you dont really understand any of these things of which you speak, do you?
ReplyDeleteIf you can't accurately read news reports to know that Ballard did not commit suicide, how can you expect to comprehend Ballard's works. This piece illustrates your ignorance above all else.
ReplyDeleteThe whole "point" of Ballard's death is that he did NOT commit suicide. He faced a painful death from cancer with much stoicism. If he had topped himself that would just have given comfort to Ballard's detractors, wouldn't it? "Here's this crazy man who wrote _Crash_," they might say -- "killed himself, naturally."
ReplyDeleteBesides, Ballard has four grandchildren, and he, very responsibly, wouldn't want to leave them such a dreadful family example. "Suicide tends to run in families," he once said in an interview, back in 1982, and he pointed to the appalling example of Ernest Hemingway. Ballard was a fan of Hemingway's writing in his youth, but he wouldn't have wanted to emulate Hemingway in his mode of death.
Isn't this a conservative blog? Live up to your beliefs! As conservatives, in this age of suicide bombing, you should _oppose_ suicide with all your might. It's a sin, and (should still be) a crime. Don't carelessly wish it on people you may not like/approve of for other reasons!
As Neils Bohr once famously said: "You're not even wrong."
ReplyDeleteHaha, this was hilarious reading. Is everything you write so ill-informed and prejudiced?
ReplyDeleteThis toned down entry is still shit. "Sickness attracts sickness" - was one of the stupidest things in it, but not even superficial in its treament of Ballard - have you actually read anything by him, apart from seeing an interpretation of one of his books in a foreign language? Conservatives, fuck's sake...
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly is it that you find so objectionable?
ReplyDeleteIs it that some writers and film makers are not as closeted and God fearing as you are?
Maybe another plane should crash into the royal hub of the Minnesota Conservatives or yet another Bush to be elected into the White House office to let you understand what is truly evil?
ReplyDeleteThis entry is blithely tendentious, and almost funny for being so stupid and unaware. Did it ever occur to you that there might considerable space between Ballard the man, and the way his characters behaved ? Or even that he might have hated some of the same social trends as conservatives do ?
ReplyDeleteHis writing was dramatically different from and better than that of Burroughs.
That you can't separate the man from the fictions he created lets me know that you are in the possession of a seriously mediocre and stagnant intellect. And I think that maybe you made a Freudian slip when you mentioned suicide. Ballard didn't need to kill himself, as he lived a full and productive life. You, on the other hand, might want to seriously consider self-murder. This world doesn't need any more cretins. Help us out, would you, and remove yourself from the frame.
ReplyDeletehttp://die-tribes.blogspot.com/
ReplyDelete"meta-theorists? is this what you think you're supposed to think? how you think a smart person sounds?" - you dont make sense but not surprising coming from conservatives actually.. you know what does "meta" mean?
ReplyDelete