The Long, Hard Road to J.G. Ballard

A couple of months ago a conversation started online. Spurred on by Nick Hornby's comments on whether we should feel obliged to finish a book, the discussion quickly became a literary confessional. All those classics we'd given up on, all the bestsellers we'd left half-read on a beach somewhere - it all came pouring out, as if we'd simply been waiting for the opportunity to confess our failure as readers.

In my case, my sin came in the form of J.G. Ballard.

I'd attempted Ballard's books several times during my adolescence, my interest sparked by the British author's connection with William Burroughs, one of my literary heroes. I was certain that I'd love them the way that I'd loved Naked Lunch and Junkie, so my reaction came as a surprise, and a disappointment. I tried Crash (inspired in part by the Cronenberg film), The Atrocity Exhibition, High-Rise. Each time I'd get a few pages in and be swamped by the density of the language, the dry fascination with theories and concepts. While Burroughs was lurid and intriguing, I found Ballard almost wilfully impenetrable.

So I gave up on them. Three times I tried to read him, and three times I failed. In the end I came to the conclusion that J.G. Ballard just wasn't for me, and relegated them to the far corner of my bookshelf.

With my recent confession, however, came a new spark of interest. A few friends started to sing his praises, with the weight of critical opinion firmly behind them - and yes, I felt as if I'd somehow missed something, that Ballard was a writer who I ought to love but had given up on too early. Having taken recommendations, I dusted off my old copy of High-Rise and warily cracked the spine.

To my surprise, I loved it. Twenty years has changed the books I read, the things I expect from a writer. What had seemed tangled and difficult before became rich and multi-layered. The concepts that had obstructed me two decades earlier now propelled me forwards, pulling me into the author's dense web of language and ideas. It's fair to say that High-Rise is now one of my favourite books.

There's a weird footnote to this story. I read the final pages of High-Rise on the train up to London last month, on my way to do a reading for Listen Softly London in Southwark. For the event I was reading 'Among the Pines', a short story I had written over a year earlier, published in Neon magazine. I'd chosen it because of its uncanny themes, something that seemed to fit with the Halloween mood. The reading went well, and I was pleased with how it had come across. As I sat down, Reece Choules - one of the other readers that evening - leaned across the table and whispered to me: "Do you know who your writing reminds me of? J.G. Ballard."

His comment threw me at first. But, strangely, I could see what he meant. Obviously I'm not of Ballard's calibre, but the things I was attempting - the short, clearly-defined sentences; the crossover between high- and pop-culture; the use of fiction to explore concepts and theories - seemed, to an outsider, to owe him a debt. Somehow, over the last twenty years, I've taught myself to write like J.G. Ballard - without ever having read one of his books to the end.

Today marks Ballard's 84th birthday, so it's as good a day as any to renew my commitment. I now have a whole new world to explore in his novels and stories, his successful experiments and his bold failures. It's just taken me half my lifetime to get here.

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