Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative volume of interdisciplinary essays on the significant British writer J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), exploring the physical, cultural and intertextual landscapes in several key novels with a central focus on The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), one of the most challenging texts in contemporary literature. Contributors include established critics of Ballard alongside newcomers. Different spatial concepts underpin the essays, from the landscapes of Ballard’s youth in Shanghai and his life in suburban London, to nuclear testing spaces and outer space exploration. Figurative locations typical of Ballard’s work are explored, including the beach, the motorway, the high-rise and the shopping mall. Textual spaces are explored through Ballard’s affiliation with modernist literary forms, including surrealist prose writing and collage, and poetic romanticism.
Table of ContentsAuthor Biographies List of Figures Standard Abbreviations Introduction Fay Ballard – Shanghai/Shepperton 1. Graham Matthews – J. G. Ballard and the Drowned World of Shanghai 2. Thomas Knowles – Aeolian Harps in the Desert: Romanticism and Vermilion Sands 3. Catherine McKenna – Zones of Non-Time: Residues of Iconic Events in Ballard’s Fiction 4. Andrew Warstat – Speeding to the Doldrums: Stalled Futures and the Disappearance of Tomorrow in “The Dead Astronaut” 5. Richard Brown – Jarry, Joyce and the Apocalyptic Intertextuality of The Atrocity Exhibition 6. Guglielmo Poli – Geometries of the Imagination: The Map-Territory Relation in The Atrocity Exhibition 7. Elizabeth Stainforth – “The Logic of the Visible at the Service of the Invisible”: Reading Invisible Literature in The Atrocity Exhibition 8. Christopher Duffy – Hidden Heterotopias in Crash 9. William Fingleton – Pillars of the Community: The Tripartite Characterisation of High-Rise 10. Jeanette Baxter – Fascisms and the Politics of Nowhere in Kingdom Come Index
