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I saw this headline tonight:
Cult Author JG Ballard dies at 78.The details are here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8007331.stm Now, I have known for several years that Ballard was fighting cancer so perhaps it should not come as a shock to read that he has died and I’m thinking what is it that surprises me and makes me feel like writing something?
It is the headline.
“Cult author”. Surely the headline should have read: “Death of a Genius” or “Best-selling author JG Ballard dies”?
JG Ballard may have started his writing life in an unassuming way – short stories sent to Sci-fi mags – but long before his death he was acknowledged widely as a writer of fiction that could not be side-lined as Sci-fi or 'cult'.
Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar-winning adaption of
Empire of the Sun made sure that JG was no longer a writer in the shadows. This was reinforced when David Cronenberg chose Ballard’s
Crash as a suitable book to film. Much controversy raged about the film and it did nothing to harm the sales of Ballard’s book.
I was delighted to see Ballard in the public preserve – interviews with the print media and appearances on culture shows was nothing less than the man deserved.
Yet there was a part of me that resented these johnnie-come-latelies. Where were you, I thought, when his only readers were those who picked out the yellow and purple Victor Gollancz titles of his early years?
The first Ballard I read, and I came to it through BBC Radio Four’s Book at Bedtime, was
The Drowned World. I listened late at night and went to the library – to the grown-up section – and borrowed my first non-children’s book. This was a rite-of-passage – child to adult through the medium of the book.
After reading that one book I was hooked on Ballard. I searched out all the Penguins (cover price 30p) with their dramatic cover art. I bought the Triad/Panther editions – larger format, cover price now £2.50 – different sort of cover art, different font for cover and text (set in Plantin and printed and bound by Hazell Watson and Viney – just up the road from where I lived).
I was so intrigued by Ballard’s writings that I would search out every bookshop, market stall or boot sale to gather his works on my shelves.
My uncorrected book proof, not for publication bound copy of
The Day of Creation remains one of my most treasured literary possessions.
Now he has died and I feel another star that lit up the literary world has gone. When writers who can enthral readers and entice them into believing the world of the book die, we, the readers, are bereft.
I thank JG Ballard for sharing his world and his imagination with us. We will be the poorer without his words.
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