[HN Gopher] J. G. Ballard's brilliant, "not good" writing
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J. G. Ballard's brilliant, "not good" writing
Author : Caiero
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-09-25 19:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theparisreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theparisreview.org)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I'd encourage anyone to seek out a couple of his interviews which
| are available on the usual video web site. An interesting fellow.
| alcover wrote:
| This one struck me : Future Now - Interview with J.G. Ballard.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RELjQkAI1RA
| twiddling wrote:
| especially his experiences as a child under Japanese
| occupation.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Putting Ballard on a master's course list, as I've done a
| couple of times, provokes a reaction that's both funny and
| illuminating. Asked to read Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition, the
| more vociferous students invariably express their revulsion,
| while the more reflective ones voice their frustration that,
| although the ideas might be compelling, the prose "isn't good."
|
| I've been in these kinds of courses. I always found the least
| helpful part to be hearing people's opinions about books,
| especially what didn't work for them. The opinions of a group of
| grad students is pretty worthless to me. Even the hotter takes,
| which can be entertaining, do not forward my understanding of
| reading or writing.
|
| What's much more valuable is acknowledging that it _is_ a book,
| it _was_ published, people _did_ get something out of it--
| sometimes many people--and then asking why that might be. I
| always wanted to break apart the mechanics of the style, the
| architecture of the story 's structure, ask why the author did
| certain things instead of certain other things, etc. What I got
| instead was an airing of personal grievances, set vaguely against
| the backdrop of the story, with thin (or nonexistent) textual
| evidence as support. I always wanted the professor to say "I
| don't care, what made you think I would care about what you just
| said?" but they never did.
|
| In fairness, neither did I. But, those classes were my vaccine
| against academia and literary criticism, so they were not useless
| and probably saved me from a career of sitting through that.
| cgh wrote:
| The worst is when people complain about "unlikable" characters
| or not being able to "identify" with them. Who cares? The book
| wasn't written so you could make imaginary friends and has zero
| to do with its literary merits.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Books are written for one of two reasons: to make a point, or
| to make money.
|
| If you write to make money, and people can't identify with
| your characters, other things being equal, you're going to
| sell fewer copies.
|
| If you write to make a point, and people can't identify with
| your characters, other things being equal, you're going to
| attract fewer readers to whom you can make your point.
|
| Why? In both cases, because people don't like reading stuff
| where the characters do random things for incomprehensible
| reasons. That's not an interesting book. You might as well
| write a book about squares in a video game that move
| according to the output of a random number generator.
|
| That's not to say that surprising things can't happen. They
| _have_ to, or again, the book isn 't interesting. But the
| characters have to be recognizably human to us, or it quits
| being a book about human characters.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's more a question of whether _an individual_ can
| identify with a character. If a book makes it into a
| literature class, chances are there 's a reason for it. I'd
| like to get at that, learn about that. Saying whether or
| not you, specifically, identify with a specific character
| is simultaneously the most low effort observation you can
| make, and the least relevant to anyone else in the world.
| It's one thing to talk about what makes the character hard
| to identify with _in general_ , but just telling me "I
| didn't identify with this character" is a waste of
| everyone's time.
| throwanem wrote:
| Sometimes the dehumanization is the point. I think that's
| fair to say of Ballard, certainly in the subset of his work
| with which I'm familiar.
|
| Sometimes you can't use "recognizably human" characters to
| make the point you need to make. Peter Watts is a good
| example of this; not only in Blindsight but throughout his
| body of work, the most effective characters are typically
| those least recognizable as human.
|
| Such works are typically labeled as "high-concept", and I
| concede they can be an acquired taste. But it's not at all
| true to say every story is either at heart about human
| relationships or worthless, else this other sort of stories
| would never have been common enough to need naming what
| distinguishes them.
| musicale wrote:
| > Books are written for one of two reasons: to make a
| point, or to make money.
|
| How about to inform, to amuse or entertain, or to tell a
| story?
|
| Or because the author feels compelled to write things, or
| is bored and needs something creative to do?
| viscanti wrote:
| > But the characters have to be recognizably human to us,
| or it quits being a book about human characters.
|
| It seems like there could be considerable distance between
| "likable" and "recognizably human". Lots of complaints are
| around the characters being "unlikable", when they're doing
| completely human things that are just not nice. If an
| author is forced to only include friendly and likable
| characters, there's a pretty substantial limitation on the
| types of human behavior that can be covered.
| broscillator wrote:
| > ask why the author did certain things instead of certain
| other things,
|
| I think that the answer to that is unknowable to any mind other
| than the author's, and the best speculation can come from
| someone who's digested many of their work for a long period of
| time. It's certainly an interesting discussion to have if you
| can find enough people like that but it's tough!
| hotnfresh wrote:
| You can definitely make a good guess at it in some cases.
| It's often easier when the writer's not very good at e.g.
| plot.
|
| Getting too good at it usually means you start automatically
| spoiling a lot of books for yourself, though. "Why'd this
| character show up in chapter 3? What do they do for the
| story? Ohhhh they're secretly the villain" or "why are we
| spending so much time with this character right now, in this
| way? Oh, the author's gonna kill them."
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I just love Ballard and pity that I took so long as a science-
| fiction fan to discover him, but of course he is one of those
| "science-fiction" writers who isn't solidly part of the genre.
| andybak wrote:
| As a 15 year old and avid science fiction reader, I used to
| badger my English Lit teacher constantly. He always maintained
| that Ballard was one of very few SF writers he liked and one of
| the few that he felt were good writers on a technical level. (I
| haven't read the article yet, but I sense some irony in the
| air)
|
| I still disagree with his definitions but Ballard is definitely
| special.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I always felt like those who were good at "writing, on a
| technical level" never had any interesting stories, or even
| interesting ideas. Still waiting for someone to suggest a
| counter-example.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| That reminds me of the HN discussion a little while back of
| Cordwainer Smith:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35978901
|
| In SF, I'd suggest James Tiptree Jr as someone with both
| great writing skills and great ideas.
| andybak wrote:
| Well. Ballard?
| caskstrength wrote:
| Gene Wolfe?
| philipkglass wrote:
| I agree with sibling suggestions of James Tiptree Jr., Gene
| Wolfe, and Iain M. Banks. Also: John Crowley.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Bradbury.
|
| [edit] also, if you like short stories and novellas, I
| found the New Hugo Winners series (in which Asimov had
| taken a back seat as editor, writing in his introduction,
| to paraphrase, "I do not understand these kids") has a
| _way_ higher average quality of writing than the older Hugo
| Winners series. The ideas didn't seem a lot worse to me,
| either. But I've also read a lot more of the regular Hugo
| Winner series so maybe I just got very lucky with the New
| Hugo volumes I've picked up.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Iain Banks
| Pfiffer wrote:
| Use of Weapons in particular
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Literally just finished High-Rise last week (which was good but
| not amazing) and I disagree with the essayist's take here that
| Ballard's just-good-enough prose is somehow reflective of the
| themes he writes about:
|
| > Not only are his rhythmic cycles, in which phrases and images
| return in orders and arrangements that mutate and reconfigure
| themselves as though following some algorithm that remains beyond
| our grasp, at once incantatory, hallucinatory, and the very model
| and essence of poetry; but, mirroring the way that information,
| advertising, propaganda, public (and private) dialogue, and even
| consciousness itself run in reiterative loops and circuits,
| constitute a realism far exceeding that of the misnamed literary
| genre.
|
| On a page-by-page level, Ballard's prose is honestly pretty
| bland. Which is okay! But I don't think it's an intentional act
| of genius. There were _so_ many paragraphs in High-Rise where 3+
| sentences would start with a participle phrase, often back to
| back.
|
| The premise itself of the novel was interesting enough, so I
| managed to turn off my editor brain and enjoyed it for what it
| was. But there are novelists whose prose does legitimately mirror
| themes of alienation or paranoia (Pynchon and DeLillo come to
| mind) and I don't think Ballard is one of them.
|
| As an aside, I've tried to read Crash at least three times now
| but the increasingly unbearable sex scenes keep driving me away.
| Not that I'm scandalized (if anything, I wish I were!)--they're
| just such a slog to get through. If I have to read the phrase
| "natal cleft" one more time...
| natalcleft wrote:
| Hilarious and sounds like a username!
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| o7 Enjoy the yonic euphemism, lol.
| cgh wrote:
| If you haven't already, check out W.G. Sebald ("The Rings of
| Saturn", "The Emigrants", etc).
| smallerfish wrote:
| > But there are novelists whose prose does legitimately mirror
| themes of alienation or paranoia (Pynchon and DeLillo come to
| mind)
|
| ...or PKD.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Ha, Ubik is one of the next books on my list!
| richie_adler wrote:
| Safe when taken as directed.
| inputError wrote:
| [dead]
| sincerely wrote:
| I actually think the repetitive nature of the sex scenes works
| for Crash bc it starts to mirror the mechanistic nature of the
| automobiles and transit systems that excite them. But I realize
| this is basically the same argument that you disagreed with
| previously :)
| uxp100 wrote:
| I find Ballard kind of mesmerizing but frustrating. Crash I quite
| enjoyed, but other short stories I often felt his concerns and
| subjects quite alien. I join just about everyone else in saying
| read him, but I would never say he was prescient, as some do. He
| was chasing after something that feels kinda foreign to me. Too
| English for me maybe?
| andybak wrote:
| His prescience isn't what makes him interesting. In many ways
| he is writing about the past and the present.
|
| He is unique for his tone. "Ballardian" conveys something
| immediately recognisable to anyone that's read more than a
| handful of his short stories and it conveys something that is
| fairly unique.
|
| The recent craze for "liminal spaces" captures some of the
| flavour. But it's also intrinsically British and very much a
| 70s thing. Maybe it's just my memory of Britain in the 70s but
| the movie of Crash failed to capture the right mood, whereas
| High Rise did remarkably well.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Yes, his fiction feels more of the past other authors writing
| in the same period.
|
| I grabbed a volume of his stories just now, and it starts off
| with a story that I would say feels very, uh, mid century,
| The Concentration City. Then Manhole 69, which captures some
| of that liminal space thing you mention. And then
| Chronopolis, which seems very mid century to me again.
| BruceEel wrote:
| Interesting take. I do have to wonder to what extent these
| elements are fully attributable to Ballard himself rather than
| being a product of experimentation that kind of belonged with the
| genre back then? Personally, I get a similar impression from
| Brunner's works from roughly the same period, e.g. _Stand on
| Zanzibar_ , but perhaps I'm comparing apples with.. non-apples :)
| yonatron wrote:
| Oh G-d we need less of this, please.
| tatrajim wrote:
| An early story of Ballard, "The Voices of Time" blew my young
| mind as a teenager and single-handedly projected me toward a
| future career in distant places, a journey I could scarcely have
| imagined from my life on a remote midwest farm. It was immensely
| gratifying decades later to have an opportunity to thank the
| author personally after a lecture in London.
|
| Just in case there are any "future me's" out there, here's a link
| to an unpredictable future adventure.
|
| https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Voices-of-...
| damnitpeter wrote:
| Incredible, thanks for sharing this.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Love Ballard's novels. Recently finished The Day of Creation
| which had echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness but where the hero
| this time is Kurtz.
|
| Seems like all of his novels are about an everyday man who
| encounters some unsettling kind of wildness or chaos and then
| "goes native" and achieves some kind of abnormal stability.
| cgh wrote:
| Kind of the opposite of Paul Bowles, whose characters seem
| unable to grasp the alien cultures and situations in which they
| find themselves, to their peril. Since it's Bowles, most of the
| time "alien" means "Morocco".
| ecliptik wrote:
| Since I read "Why we are living in JG Ballard's world" [1] in
| 2020 I've slowly been making my way through Ballards short
| stories, and each and every one of them is treat.
|
| Some fall flat, but ones like "Studio 5, the Stars" [2] about
| automated poetry hit hard in the modern context of ChatGPT and AI
| generated art.
|
| 1. https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2020/04/why-we-
| are-l...
|
| 2. https://readerslibrary.org/wp-
| content/uploads/Studio-5-The-S...
| Insanity wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for sharing those links. Have not yet read
| anything by Ballard but will start with the short "Studio 5,
| the Stars" which you shared!
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Anybody who hasn't should read his short story: "Report On An
| Unidentified Space Station".
|
| http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/roauss.htm
| TylerE wrote:
| Audible has an anthology the collects basically all the short
| stories - it's like 60 hrs long.
| TylerE wrote:
| https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Complete-Short-Stories-
| Audiob...
| john-tells-all wrote:
| thanks!
|
| title is "Complete Short Stories", and yes it's _63_ hours
| long!
|
| I love Ballard, so this is a fine investment.
| TylerE wrote:
| I need to break it back out myself. I made it through the
| first ten hours or so. It's not that I didn't like it...
| it's just so dense and disturbing. Not exactly binging
| material.
| robocat wrote:
| Story discussed on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34203778
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26405515
| breezeTrowel wrote:
| Getting real strong "backrooms" vibes from this.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Good article. Ballard's tenor and tone are purposeful; it is as
| if he is trying to present the world of his books through the
| same sort of lens the world was presented through the media of
| the day -- flat, always something outside what is seen, muted
| colors, the like [edit: _clinical_ is a word that fits his
| writing well]. If you have not read _Running Wild_ , I strongly
| suggest it -- this is a prescient book, way ahead of most when it
| comes to considering what the culture has been busy doing to the
| kids.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _J. G. Ballard, The Art of Fiction No. 85 (1984)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25521617 - Dec 2020 (11
| comments)
|
| _Banham avec Ballard: On style and violence (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22701113 - March 2020 (7
| comments)
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