[HN Gopher] J. G. Ballard's brilliant, "not good" writing ___________________________________________________________________ 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) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-26 23:00 UTC)