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Hello, America (Paladin Books) (Paperback)

by J.G. Ballard (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Flamingo (12 April 1990)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0586090223
  • ISBN-13: 978-0586090220
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,142,706 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

By the year 2030 the American continent has been abandoned. On board the SS Apollo are the descendants of Americans who left their homeland when the economy collapsed. Now, a century later, an expedition from Europe reaches the Atlantic coast. A sequel to "The Unlimited Dream Company".

About the Author

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, 'The Drowned World', in 1961. His 1984 bestseller 'Empire of the Sun' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His most recent novel is 'Kingdom Come', published in 2006, his autobiogaphy 'Miracles of Life' was published in 2008 to much acclaim. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Other People Are The Most Threatening Disease Of All, 15 Feb 2009
By Pablo K (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hello America (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.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A Juvenile Dystopia, 21 Dec 2009
By zeev wolfe (MetroWest Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hello America (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
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