Pacificapocalypse

The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.

J.G Ballard has died.

While not unexpected, it still saddens me greatly.
I discovered Ballard by reading about Burroughs in an old RE/Search pub ‘Industrial Culture Handbook’. Jeez that was in 1983… wow. Anyway I was heavy into science fiction so I started reading ‘High Rise‘ then ‘Terminal Beach‘ and finally ‘Crash‘. From the first couple of chapters into ‘High Rise’ I knew this wasn’t the Sci Fi I was used to. By the time I finished ‘Crash’ I was deeply aware that this, perhaps, wasn’t the standard recommended reading material for ‘young adults’ (If you saw the movie version of ‘Crash‘ I can tell you quite truthfully.. they prettied it up. The book is… explicit.)
Ballard was the master of ‘dystopian fiction’ which after a steady diet of shiny plastic futures in so many previous books, fit nicely into my world view of the mid/late 1980’s. Punk/Industrial/Goth all were hitting their stride; I was ending high school with a big fuck you to ‘normal society’. I had blue hair and a leather jacket. I was mad at the world. What the hell did I know?
Ballard was perfect.

I thought ‘Empire of the Sun‘ was magnificent even before I knew it was an autobiographical account of Ballard as a boy in Japanese occupied China; after wards I sought out the book and was again floored by Ballard’s words.

“Death always presents the face of surprised recognition,” William S. Burroughs.

V.Vale who chronicled both Ballard and Burroughs said “I expected Ballard to live at least as long as Burroughs, who reached the age of 83, even after having been “a junkie” for years of his life. By a strange logic, I felt that since Ballard hadn’t been a junkie, he should live even longer than 83.”

Unreasonable of course, but yeah, I know what he means.

I have a little more than passing acquaintance with the Twilight series, primarily through Court, who as a educator of these… young minds, has to experience the fan phenomena on a more personal level every day.

And her opinion is clear if not profane.
And apparently she’s not alone.
Came across this via Reddit:

Twilight has raped the minds of teenage girls everywhere…

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga has stormed onto the national scene drawing streams of female fans, ranging from pre-teens to adults and has spurred a blockbuster movie…and has just reiterated the same concept illustrated to me by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code: most people have no idea what composes good storytelling or literature.

Read the whole thing.
My favorite take is a comment by Akira:

Let’s cut to the chase.
These books, and the movie, are evil.
Evil sells.
All this talk about “Well at least kids are reading!” is such nonsense. It’s like saying about Satanists, “Well at least they’re praying.”

For facile critics of critics: No, they’re not evil because they’re about vampires. And they’re not good books because there’s no sex. Better a thousand morally serious, obscenity-riddled and sex-filled books about evil, than one lousy sexless Satanic book that presents evil as normal, reasonable or understandable.

Could not have said it better myself.

Iain Banks, my favorite author as of late, did a e-mail Q & A via his site a few weeks back and the result have been posted. I *really* need to pick up his latest Culture book.

A Flickr pool devoted to J.G. Ballard.

These fantastic photos are from a Flickr pool devoted to Ballardian imagery. According to the Collins English Dictionary, “Ballardian” is an adjective “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.”

Via Boing Boing

I’m a fan of brevity.
Verbosity has it’s place I speculate (yeah! Bet you never saw that one coming! Verbosity! Suck it!) but I prefer my spoken and written word to be concise. I’m always envious of writers that can with a few lines convey so much feeling and imagery. Palahniuk, I’m looking at you.  I think that’s also why I’m such a fan of children’s books; the authors sometimes have to be able to convey complex ideas and concepts, simply and briefly. My most recent favorite is a book Courtenay turned me onto: The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth. If you enjoy such things, I suggest getting a copy. It’s, well, it’s pretty amazing.

With all that being said (jeez jackass, what happened to brevity? Screw you. I also like irony. So, again, suck it!) the latest McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Lit 101 in Three Lines or Less made me giggle.

The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe

C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals.

THE WITCH: Hi, I’m a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.

C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus!

Heh, lion jesus.