We Are All Willing On The Catastrophe
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
what the hell is going on with you lately man
I know it's hard getting old but we gotta bear it with grace
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
this had never occurred to me but one of those things that once pointed out is so staggeringly obvious that you're shocked it never did
surely part of what makes Ballard interesting is that he at least knew whereof he spoke, having lived thru catastrophe
and there's pretty much always an ambiguity between author and protagonists
like he seems, at least to me, to find their worldview as disgusting as everything else
tho I'm no Ballard expert. read most of the famous bits, that's all.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
whereas middle class apocalypse fantasies usually have no such self-awareness
droid
Well-known member
I, don't know TBH. I read most of his stuff in my teens initially, but starting in the early 00's I read through everything again, including the short stories, which I think contain his best work.
A couple of things that struck me (and there's no claim to original or unobvious thought here), from crash onward he is basically rewriting the same book over and over - apart from his autobiographical digressions.
It seems clear that his protagonists are some kind of authorial surrogates. The rational professional, archetypal product of the west plunged into a confusing, unpredictable, yet strangely familiar and resonant world.
That we are meant to sympathise with these protagonists, the Ballardian everymen - an effect magnified by his exceptionally precise use of language, producing a kind of NLP like effect in the mind of the reader.
That this is Ballard revisiting his own trauma again and again, that plunge into chaos, the tearing apart of his world and his entry into a new realm with its own strange and inexplicable rules. The medium itself mirroring the narrative.
A couple of things that struck me (and there's no claim to original or unobvious thought here), from crash onward he is basically rewriting the same book over and over - apart from his autobiographical digressions.
It seems clear that his protagonists are some kind of authorial surrogates. The rational professional, archetypal product of the west plunged into a confusing, unpredictable, yet strangely familiar and resonant world.
That we are meant to sympathise with these protagonists, the Ballardian everymen - an effect magnified by his exceptionally precise use of language, producing a kind of NLP like effect in the mind of the reader.
That this is Ballard revisiting his own trauma again and again, that plunge into chaos, the tearing apart of his world and his entry into a new realm with its own strange and inexplicable rules. The medium itself mirroring the narrative.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
when I was lot younger after the first couple times I'd been to Mexico City, I once told a good friend - mostly in jest - that at the end of the world a black hole would directly underneath it and consume the Earth. a reaction to the intensity of the place - if you've never been, it's like nowhere else. I've been to NY, London, plenty of big cities. Nope. I was hitchhiking in, trying to find people via payphone, traipsing thru some incredibly sketchy neighborhoods at night in this impossibly vast, dense megacity. and then even after I was sorted out, it's just a lot on top of culture shock.
anyway my friend wound up dating a dude who grew up there and when she told him that he was like "that's some bourgeois yanqui shit to say" and I was like, he's totally right. it's partly general culture shock but I was imposing my middle class American nonsense on this place that to me kinda represented clamor and chaos but really I know fuck all about it. at the time I'd been there twice for like a week each.
middle class apocalypse fantasies are dumb
anyway my friend wound up dating a dude who grew up there and when she told him that he was like "that's some bourgeois yanqui shit to say" and I was like, he's totally right. it's partly general culture shock but I was imposing my middle class American nonsense on this place that to me kinda represented clamor and chaos but really I know fuck all about it. at the time I'd been there twice for like a week each.
middle class apocalypse fantasies are dumb
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
of course, in a historical irony it's a place that did experience a true apocalypse - the conquistadors (and the diseases they brought)
seriously, read the relevant parts of the True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Diaz del Castillo
straight out of Revelations - piles of bodies in the streets, packs of feral dogs, hollow-eyed wasted survivors staggering on to perdition
seriously, read the relevant parts of the True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Diaz del Castillo
straight out of Revelations - piles of bodies in the streets, packs of feral dogs, hollow-eyed wasted survivors staggering on to perdition
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
like PKD if he was an posh Englishman professional instead of speed and mental health issues
I wonder with Ballard - it's like the fact he had to keep sticking these surrogates into settings that upend their worldview in one way or another
it could signify his disgust with that worldview as much as embrace of reaction to threats against it. maybe both? idk.
Yeah, I mean the main character in Crash is called "James Ballard".
droid
Well-known member
lol, yeah, thats the obvious one, but theyre all the same.
There seems to be a line from what you're saying about Ballard to someone like Bret Easton Ellis although the protagonists in Ellis don't really fit the rational part of the "rational, professional archetypal product of the West..." thing. They're more like part of the decor, like one of the minor characters who's already been completely swallowed up the confusing and unpredictable world in Ballard somehow became the main character.
droid
Well-known member
Just a note on this. It suggests that the desire for catastrophe in Ballard's protagonists, and Ballard himself is not a diagnosis of a baseline urge of humanity, or even necessarily the west, but a symptom of trauma, the inability to reintegrate into the world and its comfortable illusions after a cataclysmic world shattering personal experience, which leads to a constant revisiting of the initial experience and even a desire for its recurrence. Most obviously evident in soldiers returning from war, but also resonant for in the lives of most people after the experience of tragedy or grief of some kind. That 'I cant believe life is continuing as normal' feeling you get at a funeral.
In that sense I guess his post crash books could be seen as a kind of therapy. The talking cure as a monologue. Something he was no doubt very conscious of.
I think I said something similar upthread, but it got lost in the fun of watching you give Luka a birching. His very own personal apocalypse.
I think it's interesting how affectless they are, as well, his depictions of these situations. They're powerful and upsetting but this isn't voiced, there's no emotional resonance, it's all projected outwith on the situations, while James Ballard or whoever polishes his nails. I should add as far as I remember him. Not read everything and don't have any of his books to hand. But that's true even of the autobiographical material, IIRC. The internment camp is presented as a happy adventure of survival.
I think it's interesting how affectless they are, as well, his depictions of these situations. They're powerful and upsetting but this isn't voiced, there's no emotional resonance, it's all projected outwith on the situations, while James Ballard or whoever polishes his nails. I should add as far as I remember him. Not read everything and don't have any of his books to hand. But that's true even of the autobiographical material, IIRC. The internment camp is presented as a happy adventure of survival.
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droid
Well-known member
Yeah, that's true, it's all very flat, dead, affectless. Turmoil and confusion are all projected outward, illustrated by events surrounding of the protagonist who sits at the eye of the storm, or a stone that's been thrown into a pond that slowly sinks whilst the waves spread out - which also mirrors Ballard's central thesis.
He's very good at that - the layering of reinforcing themes. Its maybe why reading Ballard is such an odd experience and so strangely affecting. Like a skilled psychoanalyst is trying to subtly implant his trauma within you.
He's very good at that - the layering of reinforcing themes. Its maybe why reading Ballard is such an odd experience and so strangely affecting. Like a skilled psychoanalyst is trying to subtly implant his trauma within you.