J. G. Ballard: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Description

J.G. Ballard is one of the most significant British writers of the contemporary period. His award-winning novels are widely studied and read, yet the appeal of Ballard's idiosyncratic, and often controversial, imagination is such that his work also enjoys something of a cult status with the reading public. The hugely successful cinematic adaptations of Empire of the Sun (Spielberg, 1987) and Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) further confirm Ballard's unique place within the literary, cultural and popular imaginations. This guide includes new critical perspectives on Ballard's major novels as well as his short stories and journalistic writing covering issues of form, narrative and experimentation. Whilst offering fresh readings of dominant and recurring themes in Ballard's writing, including history, sexuality, violence, consumer capitalism, and urban space,the contributors also explore Ballard's contribution to major contemporary debates including those surrounding post 9/11 politics, terrorism, neo-imperialism, science, morality and ethics.

Jeannette Baxter, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Anglia Ruskin University, UK. She is the author of J. G. Ballard's Surrealist Imagination, and her recent co-edited collections include J. G. Ballard: Visions and Revisions (2012) and A Literature of Restitution: Critical Essays on W. G. Sebald (2013).

"The extraordinary fictions of J. G. Ballard, so long overlooked by the academy, are finally beginning to get the academic criticism they deserve. This collection offers a host of incisive essays, sandwiched between Toby Litt's meditations on Ballard's work and an interview with Ballard himself, who cheerfully announces the arrival of a new Dark Age -- by fax, weirdly enough. In between, diverse critical voices cover Ballard's fiction from the sixties to the noughties, from SF to crime, from future apocalypse to domestic memoir. A very worthy addition to the scholarship of one of the post-war era's most important writers."- Professor Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London. "J. G. Ballard: Contemporary Critical Perspectives may be the most critically capacious and insightful volume yet devoted to this sui generis author whose work spans the past half-century. It is the ideal companion for scholars and teachers of Ballard's endlessly intriguing, evolving, challenging, controversial fictions.'- Professor Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College, USA ... brings together a wonderful range of critical perspectives on Ballard. -- Routledge ABES There are substantial and scholarly essays on the influence of surrealism on Ballard, his relation to Baudrillard, his cinematic imagination, the representations of London and other landscapes and the role of violence in his work. A timeline of Ballard's life and an extensive bibliography complete this stimulating volume... Students will find the summaries at the beginning of each chapter a big help. -- The Times Higher Education