Since I’m going to be posting on the Ramones and “Wooly Bully” soon enough, here’s a gesture towards my intellectual sophistication–two interesting literary links, one on V.S. Naipaul’s reputation, and another on J.G. Ballard “predicting” the British riots.
Hat tips to Ricochet and Instapundit, respectively.
P.S. I love Naipaul, but do not know much about Ballard other than he seems a bit depraved/extreme (Ian Curtis of Joy Division fame read him a lot) and his autobiography served as the basis for Speilberg’s chilling but great Empire of the Sun. Any thoughts out there on his quality or lack of it as a writer?
August 13th, 2011 | 8:40 pm
Carl, I appreciate the link. Ballard has long been one of my favorite writers. Most critics would place him in the top echelon of postwar British writers, both for quality of writing and significance. Although he expressed the opinion that his political views grew more liberal as he got older, it is quite easy to read conservative themes into his novels, particularly his final five, starting with “Rushing to Paradise,” which is an excoriating satire on utopian feminism. Take a look at some of the essays on Ballard by conservative commentators that I link to, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Best of luck with your blog!
August 15th, 2011 | 1:06 pm
Andrew, I’ve already learned a lot from your very link-rich post.
Which novel would you recommend as a starter for readers with more traditional/conservative sensibilities? (You know, the sort that through literary duty get half-way through something like W.S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch before deciding that the exercise is a soul-corrupting waste of time.) Crash seems to be the most famous, but its premise almost seems a caricature of the sort of Western literary decadence described so well by C. Milosz at the beginning of The Captive Mind.
August 24th, 2011 | 8:19 am
Carl, I’m sorry it’s taken me a week to get back to you. I’d certainly recommend The Empire of the Sun, Ballard’s semi-autobiographical account of a British childhood spent in prewar Shanghai and then in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Lunghua. Some of the best and most evocative of Ballard’s fictions are his short stories. There’s not a dud to be found in The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard. Among his early disaster novels, I think The Crystal World is the best, a science fictional take on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Of his later, “things fall apart” novels, you might really enjoy Rushing to Paradise, a cutting satire on radical feminism and environmentalism, and High Rise is also very good. Enjoy!
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