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entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones ([personal profile] rone) wrote2011-03-10 03:57 am
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dream

Mom had died (not really my mom because dream-me wasn't really me so i wasn't feeling any grief) so my brother (not Paul) and i spent the day taking care of post-mortem things with our stepdad, J. G. Ballard (none of whose books i've read; i blame [livejournal.com profile] reddragdiva for mentioning him recently), and at the end i invited him to move in with me and my brother (neither of us were married and dream-dad was long gone).
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[personal profile] reddragdiva 2011-03-10 01:14 pm (UTC)(link)
You need to, though I'm not sure where to recommend you start. A few short story collections might set you on the right track. Pick one with "The Voices Of Time" and you'll understand why JGB and drained swimming pools go together so well.

[identity profile] oh6.livejournal.com 2011-03-10 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)
There was a large collection published recently, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, but for a smaller collection, "The Voices of Time" is definitely a good story to start with. "Chronopolis" (the title story of an old collection) and "The Concentration City" also stuck in my mind.

[identity profile] oh6.livejournal.com 2011-03-10 03:05 pm (UTC)(link)
OH, and of course, there's "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race"... and searching for it reveals that the above big collection is actually in 2 volumes, which I hadn't known when I got the first. Whoops.
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[personal profile] reddragdiva 2011-03-10 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Secondhand paperback collections are readily available in UK and Australia, dunno about US.

[identity profile] epileptikitty.livejournal.com 2011-03-14 06:36 am (UTC)(link)
Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan. (http://the-purest-of-treats.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-i-want-to-fuck-ronald-reagan.html)

(Berg Katse writes "From the archives: The best, most appropriate, and mysteriously prophetic comment about the late Ronald Reagan was made by J.G. Ballard in 1967, an innocent time when the idea of a lousy B-movie actors running for political office was still considered an utterly ridiculous idea.

At the 1980 Republican Convention in San Francisco a copy of the Reagan text, minus its title and the running sideheads, and furnished with the seal of the Republican Party, was distributed by some puckish pro-situationists to the RNC delegates. It was accepted for what it resembled: a psychological position paper on the candidate's subliminal appeal, commissioned by some maverick think-tank.)

[identity profile] epileptikitty.livejournal.com 2011-03-14 06:43 am (UTC)(link)
For those who don't know: Empire Of The Sun was his childhood memoir. He spent ages 11-13 in Japanese internment camp near Shanghai- when the Japanese retreated he and the rest of the camp walked for days through desolate landscape to Shanghai. Then- boarding school!

His first several books are about a few people in or traveling through a scene of massive desolation. After that, he switched to the profoundly creepy. Crash (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/) (the good one!) is from another of his novels. Ted Turner sat on it for a year befor allowing it to distribute in the US. I am soooo goddam pissed that someone else ate the name. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Sun_%28film%29)
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