September 2 – October 7, 2023

September 2 – October 6, 2023

Putting Ballard on a master’s course list, as I’ve done a couple of times, provokes a reaction that’s both funny and illuminating. Asked to read Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition, the more vociferous students invariably express their revulsion, while the more reflective ones voice their frustration that, although the ideas might be compelling, the prose “isn’t good.” This is especially the case with students who’ve been exposed to creative writing classes: they complain that the books are so full of repetition they become machinic or monotonous; also that they lack solid, integrated characters with whom they can identify, instead endlessly breaking open any given plot or mise-en-scène to other external or even unconnected scenes, contexts, and histories, resulting in a kind of schizoid narrative space that’s full of everyone and no one.

This second group, of course, is absolutely right in its analysis; what’s funny (and, if I can teach them anything, reversible) about their judgment is that it is these very elements (repetition, machinism, schizoid hypermnesia) that make Ballard’s work so brilliant. Not only are his rhythmic cycles, in which phrases and images return in orders and arrangements that mutate and reconfigure themselves as though following some algorithm that remains beyond our grasp, at once incantatory, hallucinatory, and the very model and essence of poetry; but, mirroring the way that information, advertising, propaganda, public (and private) dialogue, and even consciousness itself run in reiterative loops and circuits, constitute a realism far exceeding that of the misnamed literary genre. If his personae are split, multiplied, dispersed, this is because they are true subjects of a networked and fragmented hypermodernity—ones for whom identification, if it is to amount to anything more than a consoling fiction, must come through man’s recognition of himself (as Georges Bataille put it) not in the degrading chains of logic but instead, with rage and ecstatic torment, in the virulence of his own phantasms.

While Ballard’s more outwardly conventional books may give us solider, more stable realities, what these realities often present—in, for example, Empire of the Sun, which is digestible enough for a blockbuster Spielberg adaptation—is a child (or childlike figure) frolicking against a backdrop provided by the destruction of an older order of reality that the world previously took for granted. It’s a cipher for his oeuvre as a whole: endlessly playing among the ruins, reassembling the broken or “found” pieces (styles, genres, codes, histories) with a passion rendered all the more intense and focused by the knowledge that it’s all—culture, the social order, the beliefs that underpin civilization—constructed, and can just as easily be unconstructed, reverse engineered back down to the barbaric shards from which it was cobbled together in the first place. To put it in Dorothean: In every context and at every level, Ballard’s gaze is fixed, fixated, on the man behind the curtain, not the wizard.

Ballard’s novels are radical in the true sense, in that they reach back to and reanimate the novel’s very roots. The presence of Robinson Crusoe in Concrete Island is glaring, as (I’d say) is that in Crash of Tristram Shandy, with its fascination for speeding mechanized land yachts and the springs of broken carriages, for the geometry of ramparts, trenches, culverts, all superimposed on Uncle Toby’s genital mutilation, his obsession with restaging assorted topologies of conflict. Or, for that matter, Don Quixote, with its hero’s obsessive reenactments on the public highways of iconic moments from popular entertainment, the triumphs and tragedies of those late-medieval movie stars, knights-errant. And doesn’t the same propensity for modulating and monotonously lullabying list-making run through Joyce, the Sinbad the Sailors and Tinbad the Tailors and Jinbad the Jailers parading through Bloom’s mind as he drifts into sleep? Doesn’t the same technoapocalyptic imaginary characterize Conrad’s bomb-carrying Professor, whose “thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction”? We could drag the literary cursor forward, through Ingeborg Bachmann, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker—or, indeed, all the way back to Homer and Aeschylus, to wheel-mounted wooden horses, flashing beacons, falling towers.

How an anti-disco stunt became an international scandal

The Europa League returned last night and it was nice of Thames Water to honour the occasion by flooding the London Stadium.

Pete, Luke and Vish are here today to wade through that and also to try to decide what pop star should replace the Michael Jackson statue outside Craven Cottage. Plus, they get excited for the North London Derby which Luke officially crowns as Barn Burner of the Weekend.

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Although book censorship impacts every single one of us — it impacts our democracy on a nationwide level — it is the students who are most impacted by decisions made by school boards, library boards, library and school workers, politicians, local officials, and right-wing bad actors. They are the ones who lose the ability to access materials that educate, enrich, and entertain and more, given that the vast majority of books being banned right now are those by or about people of color and queer people, students know, see, and feel the impact of these decisions on them beyond the covers of those books. Marginalized teens see themselves being labeled inappropriate, disgusting, and more, all of which takes a tremendous toll on their mental health.

This week, let’s look at some of the student-run, student-organized groups fighting back against these book bans. These student groups against book bans are happening in response to situations in their own schools and communities, as well as in places that have yet to see such censorship. The list below was developed through submission, meaning that students, educators, parents, and/or library workers shared the information. It does not include the PARU group from Central York School District (PA), which you can read about here.

Take the opportunity to get to know these teenagers doing important, relevant, and vital work in their schools and communities more broadly. Follow them on social media and offer them the encouragement and support they deserve.

I’m not big on regrets, but sadly, I regret a lot about my reading life. Most of this wasn’t revealed to me until I spent some time as an adult rereading books from my childhood and early adult years. Now that I have some time in the world and some perspective on how things are, I realize that a lot of things I think are normal, interesting, or even plain okay have been skewed by things normalized in the books I’ve read.

My first realization did not dawn on me immediately. As a teen, I preferred adult literature, and I think I might have borrowed my mother’s copy of Fortune’s Rocks by Anita Shreve. I loved this novel. Taking place at the turn of the 20th century, the book follows a precocious young teen as she falls in love and pursues a sexual relationship with her father’s 40-year-old friend. We continue to follow Olympia as she lives with the aftermath of the affair being uncovered and claws her way back to life after being marked by the scandal.

It’s a gorgeous book, with beautiful descriptions of everything from the meals to the setting to the lovemaking. I reread it every summer. Eventually, I stopped and thought, “Why is this okay?” You can make comments about Olympia’s maturity or how the book takes place in a different era, but at the end of the day, it glamorously romanticizes statutory rape. Full stop.

While I came to that realization through understanding more about grooming and appropriate relationships in real life, my next regret was more of a slap in the face. I came across a book from one of my favorite childhood series: the Anastasia Krupnik books by Lois Lowry. I remember loving reading her thoughts on life, and I was charmed that she lived in a city. I was also thrilled when she shared snarky insights about the different kids and even adults she interacted with throughout her day. Now an elementary librarian, I was curious to see if these might be books I could recommend to 4th and 5th graders, so I decided to reread. It was a mistake.

Right away, Anastasia starts making comments about a friend’s mother, who has put on weight. In my reread, I clocked three fatphobic comments disguised as maturity in the first 20 pages. That was as far as I got. I definitely hated the awful comments at face value, but even more, it stung that these blows were framed as a sign of Anastasia acting like an adult, as if judging bodies is a sign of growing up. Putting this book aside, I started thinking about other books I read as a child. I cannot remember the title, but I have a burning memory of a scene taking place at summer camp where two boys are discussing a girl. One of them said something like, “She’s fat, isn’t she?” and the other replied, “Nah, she has a great personality!” The first boy responded, “Of course she does. Fat girls always have a great personality.” The way that simple exchange has stayed with me for decades is chilling. I understood everything I needed to about my body, my perceived attitude, and my chances of having a romantic relationship by the time I was eight or nine years old. Because of books.