Out of the Night and Into the Dream: Thematic Study of the Fiction of J.G. Ballard (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy) [Hardcover]

Gregory Stephenson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0313279225 | ISBN-13: 978-0313279225 | Publication Date: October 30, 1991

The author of Empire of the Sun and other acclaimed novels and stories, British science fiction writer J. G. Ballard is here given a penetrating analysis, his work being explored in terms of its internal coherence, its continuity and development, and its mythic and metaphysical aspects. Ballard's fiction is widely considered to be a critique of our secular, rational, technological culture, but this study departs from earlier ones that label him a fatalistic or nihilistic writer obsessed with entropy, devolution, and dissolution in showing him, instead, to be most deeply concerned with the redemption and regeneration of the human psyche. With Ballard's focus so much on visionary perception and mystical transcendence, Gregory Stephenson argues for his placement in the Romantic visionary tradition. A comprehensive examination of Ballard's work, this study traces his output and accomplishments over four decades, exploring their thematic development. Ballard is considered in relation to a number of British and American writers of the post-World War II era--within and beyond the often too-rigidly applied categorization of science fiction, as well as to poets and novelists of the past.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

GREGORY STEPHENSON is a Lecturer at Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Press (October 30, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0313279225
• ISBN-13: 978-0313279225
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,714,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ballard Needs More Than Banal Jungian Analysis, February 15, 2001

By 

J. Grupp (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of the Night and Into the Dream: Thematic Study of the Fiction of J.G. Ballard (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy) (Hardcover)

It is very popular to give analysis to an incredibly disparate number of subjects (literature, art, film, history, behavior, anthropology, etc.) through the murky lens of Jungian psychology. This is exactly what Stephenson is attempting to do with Ballard. Such an effort is vastly short-sighted. Stephenson wants to use all the currently stylish thinkers in pop psychology, the New Age movement, and Western inner-self dogma to give analysis to Ballard. He wants to use Joseph Campbell's methods, Jungian methods, Elliade's ideas, and he wants to use romantic and inaccurate ideas of the utopian nature of primitive cultures, and he also uses banal words like "transcendence," "fertility rituals," "infinite," "sublime," "psychic forces," "ego," and on and on. Clearly in books like Concrete Island and Crash, such silly commonplace analysis is just more of what we've all heard before a thousand times from every stylish, transient postmod thinker. In 50 years the next stylish thinker will come out and supplant Jung and Elliade. Then the hordes will compare that method to art, literature, film, and Ballard.

Ballard is a thinker that is beyond rigid systems of all the numerous 20th century thinkers that Stephenson wants to fit Ballard in to. Ballard needs to be looked at from the lens of the underworld, as Hillman might say, rather than from the tiring lens of the dayworld. Then perhaps we can get an analysis of Ballard that is more than just the cud of Freud, Jung, and Elliade.