Ballard's Hello to America

A melancholy look along the bookshelves on the night that J.G. Ballard has died.

A red Cape proof copy of Hello America comes first. That's the 1981 novel which  begins when the United States is not merely a former super-power but a country almost totally forgotten by the rest of the world.

Sand blows through the White House. There are cactuses on Capitol Hill. A century after General Motors went bankrupt, the most desirable means of travel are camels descended from ancestors in San Diego Zoo.

A brave band returns to America see what all the fuss was once about.

It isn't the best Ballard, hardly more than a yarn in many ways. Crash and Empire of the Sun (first published in The Times in 1984 and generating a a red-inked note of thanks, in a blue Gollancz proof, from the grateful, and always very gracious, author) are among many better books.

I have a yearning for Cocaine Nights too, a nastier piece of work in a white Flamingo copy  wrapped in soft silver foil.

But man-made climate change was almost a wild conceit in 1981. So was the bankruptcy of General Motors. I want to remember what else was there in Hello America.

My personal tribute to Jim Ballard's passing will be to spend the rest of this night reading it again.

Comments

[David from Bradford.]

Ive been waiting for the obligatory dedications on bbc4.
A night of Ballard.
One of our finest writers, yet he seems to have been completely ignored by the BBC. [And everyone else]
Why is that?

The automatic assumption one draws these days, living in the first Modern totalitarian state, [England] Is that he upset one of Za Neu Labours ministers?

[Mobile surveillance]

I am not happy to hear this J.G. Ballard had been died, well I like your blog here. its much inspiring to me.