I need to read more Ballard. I've read some of his short stories and High Rise but clearly I need to read more.
I have trouble remembering specific titles now, but
The Atrocity Exhibition and
Crash are must-reads. They may be Ballard's greatest explorations of his 'innerspace' concepts, and they certainly got the most extreme reactions. The first American edition of
The Atrocity Exhibition was pulped after the president of Doubleday read
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan; and apparently a psychologist, upon reading a proof copy of
Crash, tried to convince the publisher to have Ballard institutionalized. As I've said before, I highly recommend
RE/Search #8/9 if you can get a hold of it (the publisher is selling their last copies at $75.00 apiece!), the interviews and essays are excellent, and there is a wonderful short story in there, possibly my favourite piece of fiction by Ballard. I'm sure that short story was also in one of his many collections, but I can't remember which one at the moment.
Thinking back now, I made a mistake in one of my earlier posts,
RE/Search #8/9 wasn't how I discovered Ballard, the first book of his that I read was
Vermilion Sands, a collection of short stories set in a decaying resort on the shores of a dry seabed. It's still my favourite short-story collection, but that may be because it was my first.
The only books I don't recommend are
The Wind from Nowhere and
Rushing to Paradise.
The Wind from Nowhere was Ballard's first published novel, and he practically disowned it. It was a rush job, and it shows.
Rushing to Paradise is supposedly a "dark and compelling satire" of "the dangerous evils of extremism of all kinds" which came off, to me, as "old white man sneers at young people, women and people of colour". Perhaps I'm being a little uncharitable in that assessment, but I'm not going to bother re-reading it.
