There’s a marvelous analysis of the late J.G. Ballard’s work by Johann Hari at the Independent today. The piece, as quote-worthy as any Ballard novel, begins thus:
“How thin is the skin of civilisation? How easily does it break and become an open, suppurating wound? These are the questions that sear through every page of the late J G Ballard’s novels – and they will be the questions of the 21st century. Ballard believed that human beings are a violent primate species, prone to occasional spasms of civilisation that soon pass as our primitive instincts reassert themselves. In his work, humans are like chimps in bow-ties, conducting a tea-party for the cameras. We might look charming and functional for a moment, but we will soon toss the cups aside and start defecating on the table.
”Ballard’s vision hangs like black smoke over my instinctive liberalism and rationality, as a constant, nagging doubt. His novels present a world where people will not – cannot – be persuaded by facts and evidence and reason for long. Our frontal lobes are too weak; our adrenal glands are too big. We would rather hug our consumer goods and our guts today than preserve ourselves and our species for tomorrow. He said of his novels: “I see myself more as a kind of investigator, a scout who is sent on ahead to see if the water is drinkable or not.”
Later in Hari’s analysis:
“The roots of Ballard’s vision obviously lay in his childhood. He grew up in the ornate mansions of the International Settlement in Shanghai in the 1930s, waited on by battalions of servants paid for by his father, who was a rich textile chemist. When the Japanese invaded, that world was stripped away overnight. His family was interred in a detention camp, and he scavenged and starved in suddenly abandoned mansions – a story told in the Spielberg film Empire of the Sun.
“Ballard said about the experience years later: “It’s like walking away from a plane crash; the world changes for you. One of the things I took from my wartime experiences was that reality is a stage set. It can be dismantled literally overnight … Nothing is as secure as we like to think it is.”
The entire article — well-worth the read and not terribly lengthy — can be found here.
I think six years at war mostly took the interest in living out of my father. He would fake it and he would make people laugh, but at bottom he was much indifferent as to how humanity ultimately worked itself out.
G.B. Shaw is vastly underrated as a fellow who wanted to reform the world of its primate instincts. But also we have people who think that life should be, at bottom, fun and games. If we can turn our animal natures—and there are animals that exhibit noble behaviors too, such as most birds—into low-stakes games and circuses (the Dodgers, the Lakers, American Idol) rather than high-stakes wars and political despotism (terror, Afghanistan, Iraq, rightwing militancy, leftwing paranoia), we can stay calm even as things fall apart.
By: joseph on April 23, 2009
at 12:50 pm
but at bottom he was much indifferent as to how humanity ultimately worked itself out
This is the problem with Brokaw’s so-called Greatest Generation, as I pointed out in my Pop Matters essay about Kerouac and Burroughs and the post-war generation; those who didn’t become grossly apathetic became grossly materialistic, which is a form of apathy in and of itself.
By: Rodger Jacobs on April 23, 2009
at 12:57 pm
i agree. and by the way, i fuckin lOATHE ‘the greatest generation.’ they became awful parents who raised fucked up kids, who in turn raised us to become what we all are. mal-adjusted, ritalin dependent zombies
By: (S)wine on April 25, 2009
at 4:08 am
Well, I was kindly pulling my punches but that about says what I was grasping at, Alex.
By: Rodger Jacobs on April 25, 2009
at 1:08 pm
I recall reading Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition. Never having read anything like it, I was stunned. I didn’t know stuff like that was allowed, and if it was, no one would ever read it, would they? Little did I know.
Your post explained what I never understood about his motivations. Very good!
By: Randall Radic on April 23, 2009
at 1:48 pm
Yes, Randy, I thought that Johann’s piece explained Ballard exceptionally well. The five reference books sitting next to my computer for easy reach are as follows
- Roget’s International Thesaurus
- Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Desk Dictionary, Volumes 1 and 2
- The Seven Deadly Sins (a book of quotations)
- 21st Century Manual of Style
- J.G. Ballard: Quotes
By: Rodger Jacobs on April 23, 2009
at 1:55 pm