Ballard

[Andrew Dinn]

Charles A. Baldwin writes:

> I think the Atrocity Exhibition would be interesting to compare to GR --
> considering what an "atrocity" and an "exhibition" might be vis a vis the
> rocketry or cinematics of GR.

I've just finished `Crash' and am reading `The Atrocity Exhibition',
`The Unlimited Dream Company' and `Cocaine Nights' in parallel. It is
very interesting to compare them to GR. Ballard has a facility for
incorporating scientific (mostly medical) fact into his fiction which
certainly rivals Pynchon. Although, maybe he is less capable when it
comes to inventing or adapting theory. But his, ahem . . .,
auto-eroticism in `Crash' reminded me of Nabokov's Lolita or maybe
Pynchon's child-sex scenes - take an impossibly nasty topic and
obscure it under a seductive blanket of pornographic language until it
is so distanced from reality and objectified that the nastiness slips
past without you noticing. I guess the Ballard quote I mentioned
earlier about science being the ultimate pornography because of its
desire to distance and objectify ties in with Pynchon's perennial
theme that science dehumanises.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.