He was a genuinely provocative thinker and an immaculate writer. His fiction and his critical work are of equal interest. If you don't know his books, well, Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, and the non-fiction collection A User's Guide To The Millenium are all immediately essential. Three of the feature films adapted from his oeuvre—Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987), David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and Jonathan Weiss's The Atrocity Exhibition (1999)—are as different from each other, it seems, asmight be considered possible. Yet each film accurately reflects and refracts essential portions of Ballard's vision. And each is an individual masterpiece.
Ballard, by all accounts an exceptional, and exceptionally good-humored, individual, died after a long bout with prostate cancer on Sunday morning.
"Everywhere is infinitely exciting, given the transforming power of the imagination."—J.G.B., in a 1980 interview with Alan Dorey and Joseph Nicholas.
I have struggled with his fiction -- I've read maybe a half dozen of his books -- but even while doing so I've had to acknowledge that there was and is absolutely no one else like him. If you want to read something Ballard-ian, you pretty much have no choice but to read Ballard. And that is, of course, an exceptionally rare quality in an artist, especially these days.
I feel like I should read something in honor of him in the next few days. Time to pull him out of the library and have a look, I think.
Posted by: bill | April 20, 2009 at 08:48 AM
Wow, that's really sad. I haven't read as much of his fiction as I'd like but *Crash* (both novel and film) is brilliant. Maybe it's time for me to finally dive into that Phoebe Gloeckner-illustrated edition of *The Atrocity Exhibition* that I've had for so long.
Posted by: Ed Howard | April 20, 2009 at 08:51 AM
Not to mention that he inspired The Normal's great "Warm Leatherette" (and Grace Jones's almost-as-great cover version). He'll be missed.
Posted by: c mason wells | April 20, 2009 at 12:50 PM
This depressed the hell out of me when I heard it: I'd read most of his work and found it brilliant. And I want to see a Olivier Assayas/Jeremy Irons "Super-Cannes", goddamnit.
Posted by: Dan | April 20, 2009 at 01:19 PM
Interviewed him in conjunction with the video release of "Empire of the Sun." Lovely guy, and brilliant, obviously.
Posted by: steve simels | April 20, 2009 at 03:41 PM
Bill, I'm surprised you're not a fan, given what I've seen of your tastes on your blog. A great mind and author. Anyone here ever see the film version of "Atrocity Exhibition"? Still want to pick that up at somepoint...
Posted by: DVA118 | April 20, 2009 at 05:01 PM
Ballard, in my opinion, was the greatest British novelist and short story writer of the second half of the 20th century. His brilliance, imagination, humor, and visionary insight will surely be missed.
Posted by: SALO | April 24, 2009 at 04:45 PM