How did we get here?
The
Present
Tense II
Walter Humes pays tribute to a writer of dystopian vision
The death of one of my favourite authors, J G Ballard, just over a week ago at the age of 78, was not unexpected as he had been suffering from prostate cancer for some time. Despite his illness, he had managed to publish his autobiography, ‘Miracles of Life’, in 2008. It gives a vivid picture of his boyhood in pre-war Shanghai, which formed the basis of his best-known and most successful novel ‘Empire of the Sun’ (1984), subsequently made into a Steven Spielberg film. Ballard was an adventurous boy, unafraid to explore the world outside the privileged expatriate community inhabited by his parents and, even when confined to a prison camp after the Japanese invasion, continuing to take every opportunity to observe the diversity of human experience, undaunted by the casual brutalities of occupation and war.
He was a natural survivor, which was just as well, because when he came to England as a teenager in 1946 he was shocked by its drabness, its dereliction and the depressed air of its ‘putty-faced people’. He studied medicine for two years at Cambridge before switching to English literature at London University: he described the latter as ‘the worst possible preparation for a writer’s career’ and left the course after a year. There followed a series of short-term jobs before he became a full-time writer. He married in 1955 but his wife died within a decade, leaving him to look after three young children: being a single father in the 1960s was rare and, by all accounts (including those of his children), he was a superb parent, striking just the right balance between love, security and freedom. Despite the huge success he later enjoyed, he continued to live in the same semi-detached house in Shepperton, West London, for the rest of his life.
His early work was experimental, pushing the boundaries of science fiction. He was strongly influenced by the visual arts, especially surrealism and pop art. One of his drinking and lunching friends was the Scottish-born sculptor and artist Eduardo Paolozzi, a notoriously volatile character who usually fell out with people after a while. That did not happen with the Paolozzi/Ballard friendship, perhaps because both recognised and respected each other’s creative imagination. Ballard, as a lifelong republican, no doubt had his own thoughts about Paolozzi’s acceptance of a knighthood in the 1980s. Another friend for a time was Kingsley Amis, and Ballard says in his autobiography that he was glad he saw Amis’s ‘generous and kindly side before he became a professional curmudgeon’.
In one of the many tributes which appeared immediately after Ballard’s death, Simon Sellers captured the appeal of his writing, especially the later work, when he wrote that it articulated ‘the implications of living in an age of total consumerism, of blanket surveillance, of enslavement designed as mass entertainment’. For me, this acute but disturbing vision is portrayed most chillingly in ‘Cocaine Nights’ (1996) and ‘Super Cannes’ (2000). These novels, set in the near future, present a world in which shopping malls have become places of worship, in which advertising and television brainwash a population that believes itself to be ‘free’, and in which the human impulse to violence is allowed controlled expression by corporate interests. It is also a world in which all sense of community has disappeared. In ‘Super Cannes’ one of the characters says: ‘The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened individuals has died for ever. We realise how suffocatingly humane we’ve become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanisation of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague.’ One of Ballard’s great gifts was to use language in startling and original ways, enabling the reader to see things in a new light. That wonderful phrase ‘the suburbanisation of the soul’ powerfully conveys the disorienting combination of material aspiration and spiritual emptiness which is such a feature of modern culture.
Despite his dystopian vision of where society is going, Ballard embraced life in all its rich variety to the end. After he died his cancer consultant, Jonathan Waxman, wrote to the Times saying it had been a privilege to know him, praising his modesty, integrity and courage.
THE
FUTURE
TENSE
What happens next?
I.
A prophetic vision on a Scottish high street
KENNETH ROY
[click here]
II.
Sticks and stones
SHEILA HETHERINGTON
on David Starkey
[click here]
III.
Karzai goes for it
ALAN FISHER
[click here]
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