“J.G. Ballard: The
Catastrophist”
Hitchens’ review of The
Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard. Not a science fiction fan …“As one who
has always disliked and distrusted so-called science fiction (the votaries of
this cult disagreeing pointlessly about whether to refer to it as ‘SF’ or
‘sci-fi’)”…Hitchens seems to like Ballard well enough. In addition to his
famous novel, Empire of the Sun,
Ballard was a prolific writer of short stories with very provocative names, “The
Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race”, “Why
I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “Plan For the Assassination of
Jacqueline Kennedy”. Even though “some
of the stories are in want of polish and finish”, Hitches writes “Ballard wrote his heart out” and “…can produce
arresting phrases and images” and, also, “…succeed[s] in being dead pan funny.”
I don’t think I’ll tackle the entire 1,200 page collection, but sounds like his
stories are worth a look. Here is Hitchens’ description of the opening story, “Despite
the menacing title of ‘Prima Belladonna [very funny!]’… one is immediately
bewitched by the very idea of a flower shop where the gorgeously different
blooms are all live stand-ins for musicians and opera singers (such as a “delicate
soprano mimosa”) and where the owner of this hard-to-manage “chloro florist”
establishment eventually confronts “an audio-vegetative armageddon.”
Crazy.
Crazy.
Link to a couple good reviews of Ballard.
New Learning: Quote from Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
of Great Britain in 2006, “Most educated people are aware that we are the
outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to
think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than
halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise,
6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different
from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.“
New word: thanatos = Freudian death wish ( as opposed to
eros = the Freudian life instinct)
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