A Unique Portrait of JG Ballard: Illness, Death and Literary Legacy
The writer JG Ballard, who passed away in 2009, presents a fascinating challenge for biographers. His early life was marked by extraordinary events: a childhood in prewar Shanghai, internment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and the tragic death of his wife, Mary, at age 34. These experiences profoundly shaped his distinctive literary vision, with vivid and often shocking images from his youth recurring throughout his fiction.
Resistance to Biography and Literary Context
Despite this rich material, Ballard consistently resisted attempts to document his life. Late in his career, he published Miracles of Life, a memoir that many found curiously flat. Christopher Priest, author of the new biography The Illuminated Man, admired this work but noted it was a carefully curated account that revealed little new information. An earlier unauthorised biography by John Baxter, though criticised by Ballard's family for inaccuracies, remains a useful introduction to his life and work.
Priest aims to solidify Ballard's place in the literary canon, a difficult task given Ballard's choice to work in science fiction, a genre often undervalued in literary circles. Even within science fiction, Ballard was an outlier, focusing on inner space and the subconscious mind rather than outer space. Martin Amis once described Ballard's talent as mysterious and hard to classify, noting his unique ability to subvert expectations.
Ballard's Distinctive Voice and Cultural Impact
Ballard's writing is unmistakable, with characters often referred to only by surnames and drawn to extreme environments like jungles, swamps, or deserted cities. Recurring images such as drained swimming pools and abandoned shopping malls create a repetitive, haunting riff across his works. The term Ballardian has entered common parlance, used to describe moments like Princess Diana's death or the 2005 Ikea riot in Tottenham, reflecting his prophetic vision of a world marked by environmental collapse and meaningless violence.
Ballard nearly entered the mainstream when Empire of the Sun was shortlisted for the 1984 Booker Prize, but he lost to Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac. This may have been for the best, as his anarchic and unsettling style resisted broad acceptance. Works like The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash faced harsh criticism, with one publisher's reader deeming the latter beyond psychiatric help. Yet, Ballard saw such reactions as a mark of artistic success, and his work has been praised for its surreal imagination.
Personal Life and Biographical Challenges
Ironically, the author of such disturbing fiction lived a quiet, suburban life in Shepperton, writing novels in longhand and avoiding modern technology like computers and email. He showed little interest in material possessions, famously splurging on a tin of salmon after receiving film rights payments for Empire of the Sun.
Priest, a writer of speculative fiction, was well-suited to assess Ballard's oeuvre, offering insights such as the idea that Empire of the Sun may have drained Ballard's creative intensity. However, six months into the biography, Priest was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He managed to write 65,000 words before his death, and the book was completed by his partner, Nina Allan, who became his wife shortly before he died.
An Unconventional and Moving Account
Allan's contribution includes interviews, though she acknowledges Ballard's skepticism about friends' recollections. The biography has gaps, such as minimal mention of The Secret Autobiography of JGB and omission of Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan. Woven into the narrative is an account of Priest's final illness, adding a poignant layer unrelated to Ballard. This oblique approach may suit an elusive subject like Ballard, but it creates challenges for readers in distinguishing authorship.
The Illuminated Man is a brave and moving book, worth reading for its original perspective. However, those seeking a conventional biography of JG Ballard may need to look elsewhere. Published by Bloomsbury, this work stands as a testament to both Ballard's legacy and Priest's dedication.
