![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Absolutely fascinating
Apr. 21st, 2009 04:54 pmThis afternoon, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
apostle_of_eris posted a link to JG Ballard in Shanghai, today's post from James Fallows in the Atlantic. That column led me to Ballardian Rick McGrath's Empire Of The Son: Exploring JG Ballard's Shanghai Home & Haunts. Rick wrote a detailed report of visiting JG Ballard's childhood home and neighborhood in September, 2007, decades after Ballard lived there. The report includes pictures, video, letters, maps, and a floor plan drawn from memory by Ballard himself, and I found the entire thing absolutely fascinating.
It's the journey, the story, the caught me rather than it being about Ballard Himself. I'm not all that familiar with the man or the writer; in fact, I'm woefully ignorant of both. That's another artifact of having come to SF around the time I turned 30 rather than getting hooked in my high school or college years when Ballard's dystopias might have resonated with my concerns and outlook a bit better than they have since. I have a vague recollection of picking out one of his short story collections fromgalaticvoyeur's extensive library and having a go at it, but I either bounced off it hard or knew after reading the one that his style wasn't my cup of tea in the 1990s. I suspect I'll be far more interested in his autobiographical works. After reading about his home, I intend to find out.
I don't have nearly the material or memory, but the entire time I was reading and savoring every detail of Rick's long article, I was mentally writing the equivalent piece about Oblique House, home of Walter and Madeleine Willis until the mid-1960s when they moved from Belfast to Strathclyde at 32 Warren Road in Donaghadee, Norn Iron. ( Four paragraphs highlighting that tale )
Just what I need: another fanwriting project crammed into my hindbrain along with all the rest. While I disagree with Ballard, who wrote "Still, this is of little interest to anyone but myself," the similar tale of Oblique House is a minor sidenote compared to the attention I still need to give to "He Preferred to Stroll." That's my incomplete account of the remarkable friendship and adventures I shared with Walter, Chuch Harris, James White, and Vin¢ Clarke during what turned out to be the last dozen years of their lives. Woven in there somewhere, or perhaps all along the way are various musings about British and American fandom, all sparked by a drunken 3am conversation with Greg Pickersgill and Pam Wells in the Residents' Bar at the Central Hotel, Glasgow during Intersection. I made a 5,000-word start on it most of a decade ago; one of these days I really do need to pick it up and keep going. It's been long enough that I finally think I can do it taking more comfort and delight in the treasure that was than in reliving the agony of the loss, much though the latter will always be a piece of the landscape.
apostle_of_eris posted a link to JG Ballard in Shanghai, today's post from James Fallows in the Atlantic. That column led me to Ballardian Rick McGrath's Empire Of The Son: Exploring JG Ballard's Shanghai Home & Haunts. Rick wrote a detailed report of visiting JG Ballard's childhood home and neighborhood in September, 2007, decades after Ballard lived there. The report includes pictures, video, letters, maps, and a floor plan drawn from memory by Ballard himself, and I found the entire thing absolutely fascinating.It's the journey, the story, the caught me rather than it being about Ballard Himself. I'm not all that familiar with the man or the writer; in fact, I'm woefully ignorant of both. That's another artifact of having come to SF around the time I turned 30 rather than getting hooked in my high school or college years when Ballard's dystopias might have resonated with my concerns and outlook a bit better than they have since. I have a vague recollection of picking out one of his short story collections from
galaticvoyeur's extensive library and having a go at it, but I either bounced off it hard or knew after reading the one that his style wasn't my cup of tea in the 1990s. I suspect I'll be far more interested in his autobiographical works. After reading about his home, I intend to find out.I don't have nearly the material or memory, but the entire time I was reading and savoring every detail of Rick's long article, I was mentally writing the equivalent piece about Oblique House, home of Walter and Madeleine Willis until the mid-1960s when they moved from Belfast to Strathclyde at 32 Warren Road in Donaghadee, Norn Iron. ( Four paragraphs highlighting that tale )
Just what I need: another fanwriting project crammed into my hindbrain along with all the rest. While I disagree with Ballard, who wrote "Still, this is of little interest to anyone but myself," the similar tale of Oblique House is a minor sidenote compared to the attention I still need to give to "He Preferred to Stroll." That's my incomplete account of the remarkable friendship and adventures I shared with Walter, Chuch Harris, James White, and Vin¢ Clarke during what turned out to be the last dozen years of their lives. Woven in there somewhere, or perhaps all along the way are various musings about British and American fandom, all sparked by a drunken 3am conversation with Greg Pickersgill and Pam Wells in the Residents' Bar at the Central Hotel, Glasgow during Intersection. I made a 5,000-word start on it most of a decade ago; one of these days I really do need to pick it up and keep going. It's been long enough that I finally think I can do it taking more comfort and delight in the treasure that was than in reliving the agony of the loss, much though the latter will always be a piece of the landscape.
