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Earth Is the Alien Planet: J. G. Ballard's Four-Dimensional Nightmare
Very good condition
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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August 1, 2016
Published in 1979, this was the first ever monograph on J G Ballard, and was also the first book of literary criticism I read. Pringle begins by grouping Ballard with other writers who found their feet in science fiction and went on to be accepted by the wider literary community — comparing him, in this regard, with Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, though also contrasting him with them — and addresses points about Ballard’s writing that have distanced him from the more popular side of science fiction: ‘Ballard’, Pringle says, ‘is not so much a difficult writer as a resolutely anti-sentimental one.’
Three chapters look at some of Ballard’s themes and symbols. Ballard is, as Pringle points out, a symbolic writer, using variants of the same landscapes, images, and character-types again and again. He points out how Ballard’s landscapes, for instance, can roughly be divided into four elemental types (water, sand, concrete, and crystal) which can be linked to four views of time (the past, the future, the present, and eternity). He also looks at the archetypal nature of many of Ballard’s characters: the rather bland Ballardian everyman for protagonist (almost always a white, male, middle-class professional), the lamia-like woman, and the Prospero/Caliban-like pairing between a presiding older, richer character and a working-class servant/jester-type. Finally, there are four key themes: imprisonment, flight, ‘Time Must Have A Stop’, and superannuation.
Far from reducing Ballard’s fiction, in my opinion Pringle enriches any reading of it by pointing out the continuities and resonances between so many of the short stories and novels. He notes changes in Ballard’s writing (from his early ‘Romantic’ period which concentrated on inner landscapes, to the middle ‘dark’ period — including The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash — which looked at contemporary outer landscapes), and looks forward to what, at the time, was an emerging new strand that returns to the early Romanticism. (I think, at the time, Ballard’s next novel would have been The Unlimited Dream Company.)
As I say, this was the first book of literary criticism I read and it’s certainly the type I prefer — providing the reader with a deeper appreciation of a writer’s work, while in no way restricting or reducing it to one interpretation.
Three chapters look at some of Ballard’s themes and symbols. Ballard is, as Pringle points out, a symbolic writer, using variants of the same landscapes, images, and character-types again and again. He points out how Ballard’s landscapes, for instance, can roughly be divided into four elemental types (water, sand, concrete, and crystal) which can be linked to four views of time (the past, the future, the present, and eternity). He also looks at the archetypal nature of many of Ballard’s characters: the rather bland Ballardian everyman for protagonist (almost always a white, male, middle-class professional), the lamia-like woman, and the Prospero/Caliban-like pairing between a presiding older, richer character and a working-class servant/jester-type. Finally, there are four key themes: imprisonment, flight, ‘Time Must Have A Stop’, and superannuation.
Far from reducing Ballard’s fiction, in my opinion Pringle enriches any reading of it by pointing out the continuities and resonances between so many of the short stories and novels. He notes changes in Ballard’s writing (from his early ‘Romantic’ period which concentrated on inner landscapes, to the middle ‘dark’ period — including The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash — which looked at contemporary outer landscapes), and looks forward to what, at the time, was an emerging new strand that returns to the early Romanticism. (I think, at the time, Ballard’s next novel would have been The Unlimited Dream Company.)
As I say, this was the first book of literary criticism I read and it’s certainly the type I prefer — providing the reader with a deeper appreciation of a writer’s work, while in no way restricting or reducing it to one interpretation.
Displaying 1 of 1 review