J. G. Ballard Contemporary Critical Perspectives

by Baxter, Jeannette

• ISBN13: 9780826497260
• ISBN10: 0826497268
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-12
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Jeannette Baxter is Senior Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, specialising in modern and contemporary fiction.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
General Editors' Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xii
Contributors	p. xiii
Chronology or a Version of J. G. Ballard's Life	p. xv
Introduction J. G. Ballard and the Contemporary	p. 1
The Geometry of the Space Age: J. G. Ballard's Short Fiction and Science Fiction of the 1960s	p. 11
Disquieting Features: An Introductory Tour of The Atrocity Exhibition	p. 23
The Gothic, the Body, and the Failed Homeopathy Argument: Reading Crash	p. 34
Death at Work: The Cinematic Imagination of J. G. Ballard	p. 50
Mind is the Battlefield: Reading Ballard's 'Life Trilogy' as War Literature	p. 66
From Shanghai to Shepperton: Crises of Representation in J. G. Ballard's Londons	p. 78
Visions of Europe in Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes	p. 94
Situating the Violence of J. G. Ballard's Postmillennial Fiction: The Possibilities of Sacrifice, the Certainties of Trauma	p. 107
Afterword	p. 120
Kingdom Come: An Interview with J. G. Ballard by Jeannette Baxter	p. 122
References	p. 129
Index	p. 149
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.