[books 2013] JG Ballard

[inulro]

74. Vermilion Sands by JG Ballard

This month's book club selection.

It's a collection of short stories all set in an imaginary future resort, Vermilion Sands.

On the minus side, the stories get a bit same-y after a while and his treatment of female characters is problematic. On the other hand, I wouldn't say any of the male characters are terribly normal either[2].

On the plus side, his take on the future from the late 60s is fascinating. This book is obviously written pre the oil crisis of the 70s, when the future was going to be all jetpacks and fluffy bunny rabbits. It's a post-scarcity, post-labour society and most of the characters are artists of some sort. People have chosen to use technology for really stupid things (er - like using the massive power of the Internets to look at pictures of cats). A lot of the ideas are really clever or interesting ideas but would be annoying or dangerous in execution (sonic sculptures, anyone?). Several of the stories have a very Great Gatsby feel to them - characters with no sense of purpose.

Which leads me to my main thought - I'm neither convinced that this is my idea of a utopia, nor 100% convinced that it is not. While there's a big part of me that would like to take myself off to the seaside, drink drinks with umbrellas in them next to the pool and occasionally write, the sensible part of me knows that would get boring and frustrating really quickly.

And then, in the last story, it turns out that there is a reason that the femme fatale acted as she did - she was the victim of domestic violence. Which leads to the question - what was Ballard not telling us about the other female characters that were mean and vindictive?

[2] for hirez - we were discussing this and you mentioned that nobody ever thinks about what the male characters are doing to make the female characters behave like they do - there's a societal assumption that the female is the Other and thus just - well, Other, no need to look in depth for a reason.

Comments

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes. Thank you. It only, finally, struck me right then that the men (and I suspect most Ballardian men) are massively fucked up in various ways and I/we fail to notice that because it's close enough to 'normality' (or what passes for normal in the relevant story).

But then I am also reading 'How fiction works' and it is warping my head in a selection of good and interesting ways.

A much later short story of his revolves around using the Canary Islands rather like the 'B Ark' and delivering all the useless middle class people there so they can lie about and/or start Am Dram groups, so I'd think that Vermilion Sands is probably a prison with well-hidden walls.

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

Yes! I liked that one. I still think Ballard is best at dealing with "big picture" stuff, not so good at people's personal lives. His best characters are all either somewhat blank and schitzoid, like Kerans in The Drowned World or utter psychopaths like the tennis coach-turned-Godfather of Cocaine Nights.

As you know, he does this fantastic riff on apocalyptic landscapes which all come down to abandoned swimming pools. I actually found one once and I could instantly see exactly what he was talking about.