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“A Guide to Virtual Death”— J.G. Ballard
“A Guide to Virtual Death” by J.G. Ballard For reasons amply documented elsewhere, intelligent life on earth became extinct in the closing hours of the 20th Century. Among the clues left to us, the...
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The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard (Eleventh Riff: The Nineties)
PREVIOUSLY: Introductions + stories 1956-1959 Stories of 1960 Stories of 1961 Stories of 1962 “The Subliminal Man,” Black Friday, and Consumerism Stories of 1963-1964 Stories of 1966 Closing out the...
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The Essential Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
I. “Manhole 69″ (1957) II. “Chronopolis” (1960) III. “The Voices of Time” (1960) IV. “The Overloaded Man” (1961) V. “Billennium” (1961) VI. “Thirteen to Centaurus” (1962) VII. “The Subliminal Man”...
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J.G. Ballard’s “The Subliminal Man,” John Carpenter’s They Live, and Black...
Today is Black Friday in America. I don’t think it’s necessary to remark at length on the bizarre disjunction between this exercise in consumerism-as-culture and the intended spirit of the Thanksgiving...
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J.G. Ballard’s High Rise (Film Poster by Jay Shaw)
Tagged: Art, Film, Film poster, High Rise, J.G. Ballard, Jay Shaw
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Crivelli’s Annunciation | J.G. Ballard
I am sure that a large part of the enduring mystery of the Renaissance masterpieces in the National Gallery was due to the absence of the explanatory matter that now drains away much of the...
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Screams from the abattoir | J.G. Ballard on Francis Bacon
In 1955 there was a modest retrospective of Francis Bacon’s paintings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, followed in 1962 by a far larger retrospective at the Tate Gallery, which was a revelation...
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A riff on J.G. Ballard’s superb degenerate satire High-Rise
With the bad taste of a recentish YAish post-apocalyptish novel in my brain, I riffled through some old sci-fi titles, hoping to find something to hit “reset.” J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel...
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A review of Millennium People, J.G. Ballard’s novel of middle-class boredom...
Act of Violence, Rene Magritte Early in J.G. Ballard’s 2003 novel Millennium People, our narrator David Markham remarks that “A vicious boredom ruled the world, for the first time in human history,...
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Reviews and riffs of June and July, 2015 (and an unrelated owl)
The second part of my (long) interview with Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes, editors of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion. Chock full of all sorts of riffage: sincerity, authenticity,...
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J. G. Ballard discusses Empire of the Sun (and other stuff) in a 1984 interview
Tagged: Fiction, Film, Interview, J.G. Ballard
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Like 60 seconds of that film adaptation of JG Ballard’s High-Rise
Tagged: Elizabeth Moss, Film, High Rise, High-Rise film, J.G. Ballard, Tom Hiddleston
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Another trailer for that High-Rise film
Not sure about this one…but I love the Ballard novel, so… Tagged: Books, Film, High Rise, J.G. Ballard, trailers
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Despite our Ballardian present, the High-Rise film adaptation is a nostalgia...
Our present is utterly Ballardian. Our present is so utterly Ballardian that our present is actually our (unevenly distributed) future. Like, what is the 2016 U.S. presidential election but a short...
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Reviews and riffs of February-May, 2016 (and an unrelated stag)
Hey, wow. Haven’t done one of these in a while. I reread William Gaddis’s big big novel J R, writing— Only a handful of novels are so perfectly simultaneously comic and tragic. Moby-Dick? Yes....
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Three Books
Crash by J.G. Ballard. 1994 trade paperback by Noonday (FS&G). Cover design by Michael Ian Kaye and Melissa Hayden. I had a redneckish college roommate who was way into cars, so I encouraged him...
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The most effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume...
In the past we have always assumed that the external world around us has represented reality, however confusing or uncertain, and that the inner world of our minds, its dreams, hopes, ambitions,...
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J.G. Ballard’s “The Subliminal Man,” John Carpenter’s They Live, and Black...
Today is Black Friday in America. I don’t think it’s necessary to remark at length on the bizarre disjunction between this exercise in consumerism-as-culture and the intended spirit of the Thanksgiving...
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Books acquired, 27 and 28 June 2017
A highlight of an unexpected trip to Los Angeles a few weeks ago was getting to meet “in real life” with some people I’ve gotten to know over the internet. I met up with Ryan Chang, who’s written a...
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Blog about some books and some book covers and acquiring some books and not...
I went to the book store this afternoon to pick up a copy of the latest graphic novel in by Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series for my kids, and of course I browsed a while. Looking for a copy of Anne...
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