J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard
Ballard in 1984
Ballard in 1984
BornJames Graham Ballard
(1930-11-15)15 November 1930
Shanghai International Settlement, Republic of China
(present-day Shanghai, People's Republic of China)
Died19 April 2009(2009-04-19) (aged 78)
London, England, UK
Resting placeKensal Green Cemetery
OccupationNovelist, satirist, short story writer, essayist
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge
Queen Mary University of London[1]
GenreDystopian fiction
Satire
Science fiction
Transgressive fiction
Literary movementNew Wave
Notable worksCrash
Empire of the Sun
High-Rise
The Atrocity Exhibition
Spouse
Helen Mary Matthews
(m. 1955; died 1964)
Children3, including Bea Ballard

James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009)[2] was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media.[3] Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962), but later courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.

In 1984, Ballard won broad critical recognition for the war novel Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical story of the experiences of a British boy during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai;[4] three years later, the American film director Steven Spielberg adapted the novel into a film of the same name. The novelist's journey from youth to mid-age is chronicled, with fictional inflections, in The Kindness of Women (1991), and in the autobiography Miracles of Life (2008). Some of Ballard's early novels have been adapted as films, including Crash (1996), directed by David Cronenberg, and High-Rise (2015), directed by Ben Wheatley, an adaptation of the 1975 novel.

From the distinct nature of the literary fiction of J. G. Ballard arose the adjective Ballardian, defined as: "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments".[5] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes the novelist Ballard as preoccupied with "Eros, Thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".[6]

  1. ^ "Alumni and Fellows". Queen Mary University of London. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  2. ^ Jones, Thomas (10 April 2008). "Thomas Jones reviews 'Miracles of Life' by J.G. Ballard  • LRB 10 April 2008". London Review of Books. pp. 18–20.
  3. ^ Dibbell, Julian (February 1989). "Weird Science". Spin Magazine.
  4. ^ "Empire of the Sun (1984)". Ballardian. 16 September 2006. Archived from the original on 20 June 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  5. ^ "About". Ballardian. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  6. ^ Will Self, 'Ballard, James Graham (1930–2009)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2013. Retrieved 3 January 2013, (subscription required)

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search