My plan for 31st August, 1997 was this: I would finish up an interview transcript I’d been working on, and in the afternoon, I would travel in from Harrow to the Everyman in Hampstead, where I was going to watch David Cronenberg’s (then new) film of JG Ballard’s Crash. But I woke to the radio news that morning, and the journey seemed entirely redundant: Crash had already done something rather more vivid than “come to life on the screen” — it had broken right out of “art”, and made itself comfortable in what passes, in these here interesting times, for “reality”.
Thanks to Jim Ballard, neither the terminal news item of the twentieth century nor his own death from cancer last week could be called unexpected. Ballard laid it all out for us, with forensic clarity, and well in advance.
You’ve already read how his work rewired the thought processes of generations of us, from the early 60s onwards, so I won’t labour it over again here. But I couldn’t let his passing go unremarked here, and I don’t anticipate having a more appropriate opportunity to tell my Crash story.
Assuming they can still read in say, five hundred years’ time, and assuming furthermore that they have any curiosity about the second half of the twentieth century, Ballard’s books (especially Crash, Atrocity Exhibition and High Rise) will be where they will find out.
For more (and no doubt better) tributes, go Ballardian…