Creator of transgressive fantasies James Ballard became the most striking, extraordinary and memorable figure in the literature of England in the second half of the 20th century. The collections of stories and novels were first known to the author, then they began to publish psychological thrillers, which caused a lot of controversy among critics and readers.
James Ballard: biography
The future writer was born in 1930, November 15. His father was a British diplomat, so it is not surprising that the boy was born in Shanghai. World War II found a family in China. At the very beginning of the war, little James and his parents were placed in a concentration camp for civilians belonging to Japan.
After the war ended, the family was released and returned to London. Here, Ballard James begins to go to school, after which he enters the UK BBC. A huge influence on the future writer in the years of study and work had a surreal art.
First novel and other works
Since 1956, James Graham Ballard began his writing career. At first, he published short stories that science fiction magazines were happy to host. Only in 1961 did the writer’s first novel, The Wind from Nowhere, written in the genre of catastrophe, be released.
In 1970, the writer publishes the tenth collection of short stories, The Cruelty Exhibition. The book brought Ballard real fame, causing a lot of controversy and a wave of criticism. Many of the works included in it, only partially could be called science fiction. Ballard was never particularly interested in such traditional attributes of this genre as technology, progress, foreign civilizations, the future, and the like. The writer paid special attention to psychological changes in a person under the influence of extraordinary circumstances. It was this Ballard's passion for human nature that was most clearly manifested in the collection. The heroes of the writer were people obsessed with phobias, ideas, a painful passion for various forms of violence.
Mental abnormalities as a source of inspiration
The continuation of these ideas was the novel Car Crash, written in 1973. In the work of J. G. Ballard describes the sexual pleasure that his hero receives from car accidents. The character constantly scrolls in his head the plots of all kinds of accidents, the participants of which are even Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy. The American publisher, having received this manuscript for publication, returned it back, calling the author mentally unhealthy.
All subsequent publications of the writer were also devoted to various mental pathologies. Only in 1979 did the theme of Ballard's works change. Soon the world saw the novel “Factory of endless rez”, which is erotic in nature, and the autobiographical works “Empire of the Sun” and “Hello, America”.
Concealed in the subconscious
Since the 80s of the 20th century, Ballard James has shifted his attention to the dark side of the human subconscious. In an unremarkable, everyday, everyday situation, the author shows the reader hidden violence. Such were the novels Maddened, Cocaine Nights, Supercannes, and People of the Millennium.
Ballard was considered one of the leading English language stylists, often interviewed and interested in his opinion on political and social events. However, the writer himself did not like to be in public, never participated in political or public life, did not pay attention to the development of the literary process of Great Britain. In the 70s, Ballard moved to a suburb of London - Shepperton, where he lived until the end of his days.
Autobiography and death
In January 2008, the autobiographical novel, Miracles of Life, was released. Two years earlier, the writer admitted in an interview with the Sunday Times that he had been given a terrible diagnosis - prostate cancer. It was the disease that prompted Ballard to write his biography.
The writer died in London on April 19, 2009 at the age of seventy-nine. This life path has passed James Ballard.
"High-rise"
The book begins very urbanly. A huge construction project is being prepared for delivery, consisting of five residential complexes - high-rises. It is in one of these buildings that the novel will take place. The skyscraper will turn into a kind of city where the residents will be divided into public classes: the lower floors, where the apartments are the cheapest, will be occupied by waitresses, stewardesses and other representatives of low-paying professions, and at the very top penthouses of the richest and most famous representatives of the elite will nest.
Ballard James, choosing the main character from all this diversity, dwells on the representative of the middle class. This is Robert Lang, occupying an apartment on the twenty-fifth floor. The man recently turned 30 years old, he teaches at medical school and is trying to recover from a divorce.
This work is one of the novels dedicated to the urban disaster. "High-rise" is not an anti-utopia, as it might seem at first glance, it is rather a psychological thriller that shows how a modern person is slowly degrading under the influence of developing technologies.
"Cruelty Exhibition"
The collection includes nineteen stories united by one theme. In the works, the author consistently turns to various pathologies and deviations in the behavior of people. As noted above, the book had very conflicting reviews, but it certainly made Ballard famous.
Only in 2012 the collection was published in Russian. The translation of Victor Lapitsky, according to critics and readers, turned out to be very successful. The only drawback was the limited edition - only thirty copies.
Empire of the Sun
James Ballard, whose books for the most part received the most diverse assessments, turned in his work to his past. An example of such work was the book "Empire of the Sun." The work tells about life in a Chinese concentration camp during the Japanese occupation. The basis for those few years of World War II, when Ballard was still just a boy. The story truthfully tells about deaths, attempts to survive, hunger, cruelty of people to each other. The most surprising thing in the book is that there are no moral evaluations. Everything that happens is seen through the eyes of a child who adapts to the hardships of war. We can say that this is practically a collection of facts witnessed by the author himself.
In 1987, the novel was released. The director was Steven Spielberg, and the then young Christian Bale played the main role. Ballard was incredibly impressed by the acting of the latter, like most critics. However, the film itself received very mixed reviews.
Cocaine Nights
This novel, published in 1996, is a very strange mixture of dystopian and detective stories. On the Mediterranean coast of Spain in one of the elite resorts committed sophisticated murder. The main character of the work is taken for an amateur investigation. However, Ballard James did not betray himself here either: the main theme of the novel is not the search for the criminal. Much more important questions are raised here: what can shake modern bourgeois society, awaken it from a lethargic dream, kept by high walls of mansions, antidepressants and satellite television?
The author gives a very unusual answer: violence, pornography and drugs will help to wake up. However, this hypothesis needs to be verified. It is this test that all the heroes of the novel will be engaged in.
The work, like all of Ballard's work, touches on questions of human nature itself, moral principles, and an understanding of good and evil.
"Supercannes"
The novel was released in 2000 and became a kind of thematic continuation of Cocaine Nights. Events unfold again on the Mediterranean coast, but not in an elite resort, but in a business park. The hero will once again fall into a detective story and solve the dark secrets that are hidden by representatives of modern business.
Former aviator Paul Sinclair with his wife Jane come to the Eden-Olympia business park, located on the Cote d'Azur. Here Jane should take the place of a pediatrician and therapist. Until recently, this role was played by David Greenwood, who went mad and shot ten people in a rage. The heroes of Ballard have to find out what drives people crazy, what secrets a successful therapeutic complex hides and how contagious violence can be.
“Miracles of life: from Shanghai to Shepperton”
Ballard’s last autobiographical book , in which the writer very frankly tells the story of his life. First, the reader ends up in Shanghai, where the author spent his childhood, then describes the conclusion in a concentration camp for internees (not as colorful and detailed as in The Empire of the Sun). After the war, the Ballard family returns to Britain; the country is ravaged by war. Then begins the story of the creative formation of the writer. Ballard very frankly tells about the first attempts to write stories, about the reasons that prompted him to create the “Exhibition of Cruelty”. But not only the writer devotes time to creativity. He also talks about how difficult it is to be a single father, whom he became after the death of his wife.
The book was a real gift for fans of Ballard.
Small conclusion
A lot can be said about the writer of the book, biography and collection of works. James Graham Ballard appears to the reader as a person who sees the dangers that modern society is fraught with. His books are not insanity, but a warning. Seeing in childhood animal faces of people prone to violence, he tirelessly warns humanity. Recalls the unpleasant side of our nature, which must be fought.