A User's Guide to the Millenium: Essays and Reviews [Import] [Hardcover]

J.G. Ballard (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002555522
• ISBN-13: 978-0002555524
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,342,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Shanghai in 1930, J. G. BALLARD is the author of sixteen novels, including "Empire of the Sun," "The Drowned World," and "Crash." He lived in London until his death in April 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ballardophile, January 26, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Tulsa, Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A User's Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews (Paperback)

Ballard describes this collection of published essays and reviews as a continuation of his fiction "by surreptitious means". Those accustomed to Ballard's imaginative gifts will be pleased to discover them no less diminished in describing the extravagances and banalities of our fin du monde era. Above all, Ballard's distinctive, fluid flashes mark this book. On Max Ernst's "The Eye of Silence": "This spinal landscape with its frenzied rocks towering into the air above the slent swamp, has attained an organic life more real than that of the solitary nymph sitting in the foreground. These rocks have the luminosity of organs freshly exposed to the light. The real landscapes of the world are seen for what they are--palaces of flesh and bone that are the living facades enclosing our own subliminal consciousness." Ballard's words and worldview are always intelligent, if not always welcome. For those who can keep up, this book offers marvelous vistas.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Continuing Iconography in the World According to Ballard., June 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A User's Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews (Paperback)

In this, the first I believe, collection of J. G. Ballard's non-fiction writings, Ballard is again writing about his favorite themes and obsessions. Dali, Burroughs and Mae West all appear. This time, however, he is writing about them in reality, for book reviews and the like, not as characters and archetypes in a hallucinatory fictional landscape. Despite our knowledge that we a reading an alleged non-fiction collection, the overwhelming presence of the Ballard worldview remains and makes one wonder if perhaps the non-fiction of reality and the imagination of Ballard are more closely linked that we would like to admit. Ballard's prose and style shine through illuminating the seemingly mundane subject matter. Also the careful categorization of the essays/reviews furthers the reader's impression that this is indeed a Ballard collection. The chapter headings of Film, Lives, The Visual World, etc. and titles such as "Hitman for the Apocalypse" adorning the review of a book on Burroughs bring to mind the headers and chronology of The Atrocity Exhibition. This in not necessarily a book for Ballard beginners. Another point of entry would better initiate a reader new to Ballard. But if you are familiar with his work and his common themes and elements, it is fascinating to watch his skill as a writer and constructer as he creates vehicles of ideological validation from Sunday supplement subjects.