I just dug out an old copy of The Paris Review (Winter 1984, issue 94
to be precise) featuring an interview with JG Ballard. The interviewer, Thomas
Frick, asks Ballard if he has any advice for young writers. Ballard replies, “A lifetime’s experience urges
me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone’s golden retriever
for a walk …”
I don’t know how much of a walker Ballard was. His house in Shepperton was within easy
walking distance of a park (below), two pubs and the railway station, so I imagine he
at least walked to these places. I bang
on about this quite a bit in the UK edition of my book The Lost Art of Walking.
Now I
discover, that earlier this year Time Out Shanghai organized a couple of Ballard
walking tours. The first one (and I’m quoting
here) “traversed the leafy pavements of Panyu and Xinhua
Lus to discover Ballard’s former residence and more genteel early years.” The second took place in “the Longhua area
south of Xujiahui where Ballard and his family were interned during the Japanese
occupation and which today features swathes of dusty construction.”
I’m a sucker for these kind
of literary excursions, though somehow walking doesn’t seem absolutely the
right mode of transport for a Ballard expedition. A Lincoln convertible with suicide doors
might be more appropriate.
Ballard has influenced all
manner of artists, painters, musicians, including Jake and Dinos Chapman. Here’s
a quotation from one or other of them (unless they’re speaking as one these
days) from a conversation with Charlotte Cripps of the Independent. They’re discussing their work The tragiK Konsequences of
driving KareleSSly (2000). “With its
spectre of contorted steel and female genitalia, Ballard’s Crash was my primary
motive for taking up driving lessons as an adolescent. I subsequently
failed the practical test on three separate occasions, but I did manage to
contort an aluminium rear bumper. Female genitalia came much later on in life.” Really? By the time most of us are old enough to drive I'd have thought female genitalia were much on the minds of many of us, still ...
I love the Chapman
brothers work, its weird compulsive obsessiveness, and of course I know
they’re not writers, but I can’t help thinking how very different their work
might be if the simply taken someone’s golden retriever for a walk. They did however have a 2006 exhibition at
Tate Britain titled When Humans Walked
the Earth. The Tate website says,
the work “contests the distinctions we make between
man and machine and assumptions about historical progress. Cast in the
traditional medium of bronze, these objects evoke the heroic tradition of
monumental sculpture. However their scatological imagery, subversive intent and
complex associations suggest a sense of impending collapse.”
Yep, it’s not so easy to walk away from the old
Ballard influence.
