A short, unfinished and abandoned attempt at writing about Ballard.

 I'm attempting to write this more as a cleanser in a more personal way and my own personal eulogy to J.G. Ballard. My girlfriend seems to take a special delight in viewing Ballard only in the microcosm of sex, that there's nothing else in his books but sex and how he takes a special delight in those scenes. I think it's a crass denigration to belittle one man's work to the sex scenes and while sex obviously plays a part in Ballard's novels, I find that by focussing on that alone runs the risk of over-simplifying for the sake of closing one's mind off from something they don't like. Indeed it would be easier, and perhaps healthier, if one were to say "Sorry his work isn't my cup of tea." Ben Wheatley's treatment of High Rise was "everything she couldn't stand about Ballard," and I was aghast that the thought a book about societal veneer being torn apart by something within them that they can't understand to be reduced to an after hours piss-up....how do you or how can you respond?

For years while reading Ballard's short novels, I was always under the impression of someone writing about societal ecocide as we destroy the planet that we're on by our own rampant greed. Great swathes of glassy prose detailing how mankind would try to cope in the aftermath. Certainly in his early work, this is the impression I got and there was always that idea running throughout his work, how we as humans would cope when we've past the point of no return. Equally, Ballard's novels work best as a media surveyor. Latching onto the crazed scenarios that pop up on a regular basis - the messiahs of a new age reassuring the broken that they can be healed, the destruction they leave behind. Yes there is sex - we know as much that in the post hippie, post-60s breaking the taboo of talking of sex. All manner of things such as Kinsey and the Profumo Affair weigh large.