On J.G. Ballard

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 582 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

J.G. Ballard’s life and work contains many incongruities, outraging the Daily Mail and being offered a CBE (which he rejected), and variously appealing to both Spielberg and Cronenberg. In a recent piece, Edmund Gordon unpicks the contradictions and contrarianism in Ballard’s non-fiction writing, and he joins Tom to continue the dissection. They explore Ballard’s strange combination of ‘whisky and soda’ conservatism and the avant-garde, what he was trying to achieve through his fiction, and how ‘Ballardian’ Empire of the Sun really is. Sponsored links: Find out more about Pace Gallery London’s Kiki Kogelnik exhibition here: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/kiki-kogelnik-the-dance/ Learn more about Serious Readers: www.seriousreaders.com/lrb Sign up to the LRB's Close Readings subscription: In Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:22.9	You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast, I'm Thomas Jones, and I'm talking today with Edmund Gordon, the author of The Invention of Angela Carter, who teaches creative writing at King's College London. He has a piece in the latest issue of the LRB on J.G. Ballard, whom he describes as Britain's
1:28.2	most significant among guard writer of the post-war period. It's a review of Ballard's selected
1:33.2	non-fiction, 1962 to 2007, edited by Mark Blacklock, though he also, of course, writes about
1:39.2	Ballard's fiction. Hello, Edmund, and thank you for joining me today. Thank you very much
1:43.4	for having me.
	...

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