Hello America
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Review
'J G Ballard's talent is one of the most mysterious and distempered in modern fiction…It is futile to have expectations of Ballard: he will inevitably subvert them' Martin Amis, Observer
'A mythically resonant epic journey…A joy - witty, playful, moving, mythic, poetic' Literary Review
'This fable lifts a great freight of ideas effortlessly…The story of an expedition driven on by wishes of possession and power but guided internally by myths of America whose sources lie in the late 20th century' Guardian
'Enter Mr Ballard's worlds and you become entranced in a séance difficult to break out of, so powerful is his method' The Times
Product Description
A terrifying vision of the future from one of our most renowned writers – J G Ballard, author of Empire of the Sun and Crash.
Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable - the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture.
The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
JG Ballard is the charter of obscene modernity, of social breakdown and social control, consumerist pathology and ecological destruction. The appeal of his work is precisely its ambiguity - a great attraction to the machinery and possibilities of the modern, laced with a deep suspicion of its forms and consequences. For Ballard, the trappings of civilization try to supress something essential in us (aggression, madness, fornication, hierarchy), which is actually only rearticulated in a new variation on these themes. In a way, his entire canon can be read as a set of dramas based on Freud's 'Civilization And Its Discontents'. Politically, there is obviously a tension here. As well as a critique of consumer capitalism, atomised social existence and technological folly, Ballard can also be read as a Hobbesian essentialist, forever warning that when the controlling institutions of government collapse, so do the very possibilities of human existence.
Many of these familiar themes are central to 'Hello America', which falls mainly within the strand of Ballardian thought that concerns ecology ('The Drowned World' or 'The Drought') but peppers it with some ruminations on society that are more associated with his work on the contemporary ('High Rise' or 'Cocaine Nights'). In it, an expedition of Europeans explore an America long abandoned and reduced to desert by the collapse of its oil-sustained economy and society. Like Ballard, these individuals all have a love for America as a land of discovery and possibility. But the series of disasters that befall them have more to do with attempts to realise those dreams than with destroyed American in the first place.
All this is great conceptual stuff, and Ballard writes, as always, in a smooth and easily engaging style. Which is part of the problem. I found myself wanting 'Hello America' to be a more convaluted read, to induce in me the kinds of sensations I got from reading 'Crash' or 'The Atrocity Exhibition' - a language and structure worthy of its narrative. Instead, everything happens just a bit too easily.
There is also an obvious dating here - this book is from 1981 and its imaginary landscapes and dilemmas reflect those times (the presidency of Richard Milhouse Nixon, the Cold War, Charles Manson, city-destroying nuclear weapons) as much as themes that still resonate today (oil shocks, authoritarian power, environmental decline). None of this is helped by a slightly heavy-handed approach to the American survivors, who are given individual names taken from the old corporate beasts (such as Xerox, GM, Pepsodent and Heinz) and assigned clans named after the social classes of the forgotten America (The Bureaucrats, The Divorcees, The Astronauts). The allegory is clear enough but doesn't quite function as it might.
None of this is to suggest that 'Hello America' is a bad book. It has many qualities and a suprisingly thrilling narrative. But it is not a touch on the other greats, which remain the standard for what the Ballardian can do for your mind.
Many of these familiar themes are central to 'Hello America', which falls mainly within the strand of Ballardian thought that concerns ecology ('The Drowned World' or 'The Drought') but peppers it with some ruminations on society that are more associated with his work on the contemporary ('High Rise' or 'Cocaine Nights'). In it, an expedition of Europeans explore an America long abandoned and reduced to desert by the collapse of its oil-sustained economy and society. Like Ballard, these individuals all have a love for America as a land of discovery and possibility. But the series of disasters that befall them have more to do with attempts to realise those dreams than with destroyed American in the first place.
All this is great conceptual stuff, and Ballard writes, as always, in a smooth and easily engaging style. Which is part of the problem. I found myself wanting 'Hello America' to be a more convaluted read, to induce in me the kinds of sensations I got from reading 'Crash' or 'The Atrocity Exhibition' - a language and structure worthy of its narrative. Instead, everything happens just a bit too easily.
There is also an obvious dating here - this book is from 1981 and its imaginary landscapes and dilemmas reflect those times (the presidency of Richard Milhouse Nixon, the Cold War, Charles Manson, city-destroying nuclear weapons) as much as themes that still resonate today (oil shocks, authoritarian power, environmental decline). None of this is helped by a slightly heavy-handed approach to the American survivors, who are given individual names taken from the old corporate beasts (such as Xerox, GM, Pepsodent and Heinz) and assigned clans named after the social classes of the forgotten America (The Bureaucrats, The Divorcees, The Astronauts). The allegory is clear enough but doesn't quite function as it might.
None of this is to suggest that 'Hello America' is a bad book. It has many qualities and a suprisingly thrilling narrative. But it is not a touch on the other greats, which remain the standard for what the Ballardian can do for your mind.
0 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
JG Ballard is better known for his 'true' historical fiction (Empire of the Sun) then for his alternate history novels and with good reason. Ballard imagines a world where the US has been destroyed as the result ecological warfare. The Russians had built a damn across the Behring Straits and caused the center of America (the great plains) to turn into a desert. Even the mighty Mississippi River had dried up, while huge sand dunes (like in the Sahara) had covered all of the USA from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast.
Those Americans who could get across the sea to Europe were assimilated back into their countries of origin while a few ended up in ghettos in Dublin and Berlin. The rest of the world had been taken over by the Russians. In the next hundred years a few rescue missions sailed for the Western Hemisphere, but none came back to tell any tales. The current mission, led by an ex-Israeli naval captain and made up of some ex-american descendants, aimed for New York City to find the Statue of Liberty and any other objects that could be brought back.
Having landed in NYC and finding that the city was covered by ten or more feet of sand, they decided to do some exploring or the vicinity. While in New Jersey they ran into some 'real' americans who had survived like bedouins in the harsh climate. OK. Are you getting bored? I was.
Blah, blah blah. They get to Las Vegas. It's run by a maniac who calls himself Charles Manson. He has nuclear missiles. Blah, blah blah. You get the point.
Truly disappointing. Kids though should enjoy it because a lot of things get blown up.
Zeev Wolfe
Those Americans who could get across the sea to Europe were assimilated back into their countries of origin while a few ended up in ghettos in Dublin and Berlin. The rest of the world had been taken over by the Russians. In the next hundred years a few rescue missions sailed for the Western Hemisphere, but none came back to tell any tales. The current mission, led by an ex-Israeli naval captain and made up of some ex-american descendants, aimed for New York City to find the Statue of Liberty and any other objects that could be brought back.
Having landed in NYC and finding that the city was covered by ten or more feet of sand, they decided to do some exploring or the vicinity. While in New Jersey they ran into some 'real' americans who had survived like bedouins in the harsh climate. OK. Are you getting bored? I was.
Blah, blah blah. They get to Las Vegas. It's run by a maniac who calls himself Charles Manson. He has nuclear missiles. Blah, blah blah. You get the point.
Truly disappointing. Kids though should enjoy it because a lot of things get blown up.
Zeev Wolfe
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
The Sun that got away
15 July 1999
Format:Hardcover
Hello America is a tale of the rediscovery of America one hundred years after its abandonment following a series of financial and energy disasters. The new pioneers find a desertified continent in which once mighty cities have become vast ghost towns; the sometime haunts of wandering "tribes" of "executives", "divorcees" and "bureaucrats". The explorers' transcontinental odyssey leads them to Las Vegas, reborn as a tropical paradise, where they meet "President" Charles Manson. Who they discover has very different ideas for reinventing the United States. Hello America is an improbable book. Not for its premise which is quite intriguing, but for its depictions of 100 year old watches, autos and cruise missiles that still function. Furthermore, Ballard's usually sly ironies take some painfully clumsy turns e.g., characters named "Pepsodent" ,"Heinz" and "Xerox". What hurts the book most is the feeling that Ballard is just fulfilling a publishing committment. He never warms to his story and character development, which has never been his strong suit, has rarely been more lacking in a book. What saves Hello America from the ash heap are his usual stocks in trade: interesting ideas, a rarified prose style and flashes of brilliant imagery. Still, a book for Ballard die hards only.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
am I the only one who likes this book?
3 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
Well, I liked it. I don't think the other reviews were terribly fair. It wasn't Shakespaere or Sartre, but it wasn't awful either. The characters weren't terribly deep, but I can forgive that. And anyone who is judging this based on the plausibility of its premise really hasn't read much sci-fi at all.
I agree with another reviewer that it's a little hard to believe that much of the machinery would still be working after a century of disuse. But that doesn't detract from the story. And it's nothing compared with the suspension of disbelief required for some of the "new" flying machines featured in the story.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Say Goodbye to Hello
16 April 2001
Format:Hardcover
Wonderful premise! Awful execution! It's a tough experience to be 50 pages when one realizes that a book does not live up to expectations....at page 75 realize it shall not get better...at page 100 see that one is so bored there is too much temptation to give up. Listen to that temptation. It is unfathomable how a well-regard novelist wrote such a poor book and that no editor saved or stopped the book before it consumed several hours of my time with no gain to me.
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