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A User's Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews

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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.

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.