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Product Description
Review
(Baxter) follows every link, traces every connection elucidates on references to publications and people, to friends, to other writers, and especially to Ballard's fascination with surrealism in art. (Mary Leland IRISH EXAMINER )
Book Description
Excellently written and perceptive biography of writer J.G. Ballard.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is quite readable, and interesting in that it covers the writer's life, filling in spaces that hadn't been elaborated by Ballard himself. But, it seems obvious that that the biographer has it in for his subject. He asserts that Ballard was racist, that he beat up his partner, that he was a pornography obsesssive, though none of this is backed up in a persuasive manner. Ballard is described as racist on the evidence that he didn't speak any other language than English, that his friends in adulthood were all white and that the only characters in his novels that weren't white or middle class were villains. It seems tendentious. He disqualifies most of what Ballard himself said, saying that he was a fantasist and a liar. At times he refutes accounts that Ballard has given, saying only that they 'seemed unlikely'. He will then reiterate the conclusions he himelf has come to later, as though further evidence of Ballard's mendacity.
Poor.
Poor.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Do not buy this book. John Baxter has obviously tried to capitalize on Ballard's death by rushing this poorly researched and dim biography. It was not authorized by Ballard's estate, and it is full of factual errors. Apparently Ballard's daughter, Beatrice, filled six pages of things Baxter simply got wrong. There are no references whatsoever, and all of Baxter's accounts have a hearsay, second-hand quality. Ballard scholars have been able to pinpoint some of the sources in print of much of it, and it seems Baxter just mixes multiple sources together, for instance. There are no references listed, so hardly can really fact-check any of it. It is of no use to Ballard enthusiasts or to the general reader.
The book seems centered on gossip and Baxter seems intent to paint a crazy, maniac picture of Ballard, one that drank heavily and repeatedly abused of his girlfriends. I don't know if that's an attempt to "understand" Ballard -- maybe this is what Baxter has instead of genuine insight. He is completely unable to understand Ballard at all (and his attempts to discuss Balalrd's actual works are risible -- how can he get this wrong? He could've just read the books) so in order to make sense of books like Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition he inflates this notion that Ballard must be a psychopath just like his characters. Ballard deserves much, much more than this.
The book seems centered on gossip and Baxter seems intent to paint a crazy, maniac picture of Ballard, one that drank heavily and repeatedly abused of his girlfriends. I don't know if that's an attempt to "understand" Ballard -- maybe this is what Baxter has instead of genuine insight. He is completely unable to understand Ballard at all (and his attempts to discuss Balalrd's actual works are risible -- how can he get this wrong? He could've just read the books) so in order to make sense of books like Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition he inflates this notion that Ballard must be a psychopath just like his characters. Ballard deserves much, much more than this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
After picking this up and being quite excited, as I have been a fan of Ballard's work for 30+ years, I was dumbfounded when I actually began to read it, and quickly realised that it was more an attempt at an assassination than a biography. Like some of the other reviewers here, I found some of the assertions absolutely incredible i.e. completely impossible to believe, based as they were on absolutely NO evidence, just the poisonous dislike the "writer" so obviously has for his subject. Why did he bother to write this "biography"? One can only assume he was trying to cash in.
Avoid completely. Please.
Wait until a *real* biography of one of the most important writers of the 21st century comes along... Hopefully, that will be soon, and this rubbish can be confined to the dustbin where it belongs.
I'd give it 0 stars if I could.
Avoid completely. Please.
Wait until a *real* biography of one of the most important writers of the 21st century comes along... Hopefully, that will be soon, and this rubbish can be confined to the dustbin where it belongs.
I'd give it 0 stars if I could.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Only part of the story ...
Unofficial biographies are often more about the biographer desperately wanting to be the first to tackle the subject, than a true picture of the person in question. Read more
Published 1 month ago by boudiccabeazley
A four-dimensional man
The title of this biography is, surely, not the biographer's statement of an intent to plumb the "inner man" that was J G Ballard, as Ballard himself did that at such length and in... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Murray
Not going to read this
I was looking forward immensely to buying this and reading more about Ballard's life. However the various excerpts I have read, together with some of the 'leaked' comments to the... Read more
Published 8 months ago by NW
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