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98 stories! 1,216 pages! Is the complete J.G. Ballard worth it?
It is now half a century since J.G. Ballard invented out of whole cloth in 1960 the true sound of what he had been trying to say from the very beginning of his career; and told us the secret of the world. Unsurprisingly, for his genius could almost be defined as a kind of preternatural alertness, he seemed instantly to understand that he had come through and could now speak in own tongue to us; at the same time, for he was only human, and secular time and its terrors afflicted him like all men, he was only able to speak intermittently in that transfixing voice.
Ballard's greatest works—Breakfasts in the Ruins of Late Ossuary Capitalism like The Atrocity Exhibition and the "Crashed Cars" exhibition and Crash—were still some years in the future, and mark for many of us the heart of his career, a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use.
So it is good that the slightly expanded (but not yet complete) American issue of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard (W. W. Norton & Company, $35.00) gives us a chance to penetrate backwards to the start of things, a process made easier because the book is chronological in order of publication; as Ballard was a pragmatic worker who wrote stories to live—he was in fact not averse to double-selling his work—it's likely that composition and publication came close together.
This order of things exposes three facts immediately: More than half of his short stories were published in the first decade of his career; leaving out Atrocity Exhibition material—the condensed novels Ballard himself insisted were a conglomerate entity and not stories at all—almost all of his best short work had appeared by 1964 or so; and—this may be the real surprise—most of the work of the first decade is hugely less competent than the stories in which Ballard seemed almost superhumanly awake to the flavor of the disaster of the world.
It is natural to try to concentrate on the latter.
The world Ballard is right about is not of course the entirety of this habitat of the species we culminate. There is no direct political argument in his great stories, no art, no procreation, no dialogic dance of voices, no parent still alive nor son nor daughter (can this be true?), no bootstrap Edison. As for the physical planet itself, he is not so much indifferent to flora and fauna as incapable of thinking of a truly messageless "utterance" of the natural: Ballard's planet is no more spontaneous than Kubrick's moon; it is exactly as rural as the Brooklyn Bridge. There is nothing empty in Ballard that has not been deserted, nothing vacant inside the skull of the found, inside the steaming corpus of the drowned giant, that has not been vacated.There is nothing in Ballard that has not already suffered a seachange.
What he is so right about, in other words, is wrongness: Ballard is the great poet of the belatedness of the uncanny; like with the work of the ludicrously misunderstood American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), his central stories portray a world just subsequent to the crime. But forensic evidence is lacking. The only evidence of the crime is us. Wyeth and Ballard do not portray action but the unheimlichkeit or Uncanny which succeeds action. What they tell us is that, even though the skull of the world rings with "message," what has been done can not be heard. The world is an echolalia of that which cannot be said.
The world is amnesia.
Beyond a couple of twinges of diction, there is of course nothing new in this late picking away at what I think is the heart of Ballard. Critics and readers have been working to understand him for decades now, and Ballard himself gave us volumes of gloss. All the same, the flood of work in the Complete does induce one to read him again, to see him from a world—this world of 2009—whose incessancy he did not envision, except in words of prose, which anyone can write. In other words, he was cognitively aware of the year he died in, but did not believe in it.
There are hints of the true Ballard, who we are trying to meet again, just as there are subfusc tracts of the Ballard who bores us, as early as the first story he ever published, "Prima Belladona" (1956), the most awkward of the Vermilion Sands sequence about a constantly mutating artist's colony/tourist town venue that slightly resembles a Dying-Earth at dusk with the light behind it, but in daylight turns out to be Orlando, or Weston-Super-Mare. Several other tales published around the same time hint peckishly at densities of revelation, but flounder in Thought-Experiment speculations, for example "Chronopolis" (1960), where Time Police protect vast suburban populations from time tyranny by making sure nobody owns a clock. Ballard handles this kind of cogitation with striking ineptitude, in a prose pocked with nuggets of sententiae of a quality many of us forgot he had a taste for when young. It is easier to understand and forgive the wise we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us-like homilies that saturate novels like Super-Cannes (2000) or Millennium People (2003), written late in life after Ballard had contracted Porlock's Kublai Syndrome in Older Writers; and it is only now, going back to the beginning, do we realize that much of the tireless amplitude of Ballard's mind was always ordinary.
But then, as we clamber through tale after tale, it happens. The story immediately following "Chronopolis" breathes the air of a different planet. The first sentence of "The Voices of Time" (1960) is the first of many great opening sentences from the author of perhaps more great opening sentences than any other author in the field. As far as the chronological ladder of Complete is concerned, it all comes from nowhere:
Later Powers often thought of Whitby, and the strange grooves the biologist had cut, apparently at random, all over the floor of the empty swimming pool.
We could unpack the cargo of this sentence for days; the heart of its burden, for me, of course (see above) lies in its assertion of a world that has already been spent. It is a sentence in which the passage of time is as detached as a loose retina, for its first word refers to a recollection that will either come later in the tale, or maybe not until the tale, which is about re-enacting the past, has been told. Belatedness piles on belatedness, under the eye of an implied author who is clearly omniscient but (like god) lets us guess. Then there is the empty swimming pool: an artifact of 20th-century Lonely Crowd culture that cannot any more hold water. And there are the strange grooves, runes as unheimlich as the carved faces that shout out the vacancy of Easter Island, in dead silence. And then, for the first time in the chronology of stories here assembled, we are given to understand that the protagonist is a becalmed professional—a doctor or a scientist of some sort, there will be dozens of him in later Ballard stories, the kind of man who, like a shark, must swim constantly to keep from choking in the obsolescence of his skills kit—and we suspect that his deepest gesture in "The Voices of Time" will reiterate the insectile obedience of Whitby: that both men carve glyphs as ultimately unreadable as termite droppings.
The story itself is set like most great Ballard stories in an isolated research station or institute or enclave which has been partly or wholly abandoned, because the story of the world has subsided below the waterline. The mysterious lethargy that runs "The Voices of Time" down is very clearly caused by a sudden increase in world entropy—perhaps because this is the first of these stories, Ballard felt he needed to incorporate some form of explanation; later on, rightly, he felt no such need. The tale ends in an epiphany of relinquishment, in terms more florid—"golden suns in the island galaxies, vanished for ever now in the myriad deaths of the cosmos"—than he would later feel comfortable with.
So we can show where this story lies early in Ballard's career, and we can suggest that later stories assembled in The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard—like "The Terminal Beach" (1964) of "The Drowned Giant" (1964) or "The Day of Forever" (1966) or the incomparable "Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer" (1966)—seem, in 2009, imperishable. We can show that the Memories of the Space Age sequence of tales about the American conquest of space are inherently about the same cenotaphic world as any of his tales in which no vestige of our history can be detected; we can show that even the earliest of these, "The Cage of Sand" (1962), is not so much a prediction of the collapse of the enterprise as a profound assumption that Cape Canaveral was, like Easter Island, a rune. Ballard could not have believed in a space race because he believed that those who dreamed the dreams of science and avarice were psychopaths, acting out the primal scenes that cripple us on this planet: a psychopath in Ballard's world being a person who does not know he is dead.
A volume of this size and scope is beyond the scope of a single response. Briefly, it is possible to suggest that Ballard's later short fiction—it occupies the last 400 pages of the Complete—does mark a slow seeping away of his interest in the form, though flashes of the old cold drowned-giant gaze do occasionally shaken the reader. I know that I, for one, found much to chasten any readerly complacency in the last individual Ballard collection I had a chance to review, War Fever from 1990.
In the end though, we return to the moment when the long spasm of genius lights the page for the first time in "The Voices of Time", and we are told that a witness has begun to speak, that like any witness who tells the truth he is going to touch us like a blight, touch us like blessing.
John Clute is a writer, editor and critic. His first novel in 25 years, Appleseed, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. He co-edited The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, and wrote Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, all Hugo Award winners. His criticism and reviews have appeared in various journals in the UK and America. Much of this material has been collected in Strokes: Reviews and Essays 1966-1986, Look at the Evidence: Reviews and Essays and Scores: Reviews 1993-2003, which includes most of the first 75 "Excessive Candour" columns, and other pieces. Canary Fever: Reviews, which is due later this year, will contain most of the next 70 or so "Excessive Candour" columns, plus other work. The Darkening Garden: a Short Lexicon of Horror appeared in 2006; he is working on a much enlarged third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, due to go online in late 2009 or so.
By theApocalypse at 10:16 AM ON 10/15/09
"It is now half a century since J. G. Ballard invented out of whole cloth in 1962 the true sound of what he had been trying to say from the very beginning of his career; and told us the secret of the world. Unsurprisingly, for his genius could almost be defined as a kind of preternatural alertness, he seemed instantly to understand that he had come through and could now speak in own tongue to us; at the same time, for he was only human, and secular time and its terrors afflicted him like all men, he was only able to speak intermittently in that transfixing voice."
Seriously, how exactly is it that you have a job writing anything other than parking tickets?
By Just me at 10:30 AM ON 10/15/09
Most of the writing on Sci Fi Wire is bad. Rambling, long-winded sentences full of non-sequiturs coupled with a total lack of proofreading. Of course, this is true of many websites.
By booorrrrring at 11:51 AM ON 10/15/09
This is like the class everyone drops in junior college.
"In the end though, we return to the moment when the long spasm of genius lights the page for the first time in "The Voices of Time", and we are told that a witness has begun to speak, that like any witness who tells the truth he is going to touch us like a blight, touch us like blessing."
Pretentious non-speak.
By bob at 1:20 PM ON 10/15/09
You boys seem so proud of your stoopidity. You blame the author for not understanding his review. American anti-intellectualism at it finest.
By genericwhiteguy at 1:50 PM ON 10/15/09
This is horribly written. It reminds me of a random AI-produced article. Back away from your thesaurus and simplify your sentence structure. Reads like a college freshman term paper.
By Tee Willy at 2:38 PM ON 10/15/09
This joke would be funnier if it was about one third the length.
By bob at 3:31 PM ON 10/15/09
oops, damn trolls
By hulklite at 3:44 PM ON 10/15/09
@ bob
"You boys seem so proud of your stoopidity [sic]".
Stupidity would be assuming that articulating nothing, in the most pretentious manner, gains one the spoils of intellectual enrichment. Or, at the very least, convinces others of your elite status.
It does not.
As a side note and an attack aimed directly at you, neither does going against the crowd for the sake of an unearned sense of individuality.
Tool.
By ecgordon at 4:01 PM ON 10/15/09
I applaud Clute for being able to recognize the genius writers among us, but I have always had an aversion to reading his reviews. He is more concerned with impressing us with his vocabulary than in speaking succinctly to a subject.
Besides, Ballard's best work is in his novels not his short stories. The Unlimited Dream Company is my favorite, along with the non-SF Empire of the Sun and its sequel The Kindness of Women, Crash and High Rise.
And while I'm at it, indulge me in a bit of shameless self-promotion. Here's my essay on Ballard on my site - http://templetongate.net/ballard.htm
By AngryJonny at 4:08 PM ON 10/15/09
Dear God, attempting to read this article made me feel like I was grading college papers again by students hopped up on speed and with way too happy a thesaurus trigger finger.
That said, I'm glad to know this collected works of Ballard exists. Love a lot of his works.
I've always wanted to read High-Rise, which has been out of print for forever ever since a teacher recommended it years and years ago.
By ks47 at 10:07 PM ON 10/15/09
that is one big toss-pot of a review.
By Adam Roberts at 3:42 AM ON 10/16/09
Pearls, here. Swine too.
By goddogx at 5:53 AM ON 10/16/09
haha adam, yes it's a close match here at syphilis stadium!
By The Corinthian at 6:15 AM ON 10/16/09
The shift to Sci-Fi Wire hasn't done Clute much good. He's treating his readers like adults, but his readers are people who think Gene Roddenberry was an intellectual. Never the twain shall meet.
By Just Me at 9:51 AM ON 10/16/09
This article was written by someone who is obviously in love with his own writing. One gets the impression that the author is more interested in the reader marveling over his own prose than the subjuct of the article itself. The very first paragraph is pretentious, made up of only two rambling sentences. How many comas can you use to craft a sentence and yet still leave out key words? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan talks like this guy writes.
By Marty B. at 10:50 AM ON 10/16/09
Bull Corinthian this review is excrement. Take this sentence that's apparently contained enough to justify itself as a paragraph:
"Ballard's greatest works—Breakfasts in the Ruins of Late Ossuary Capitalism like The Atrocity Exhibition and the "Crashed Cars" exhibition and Crash—were still some years in the future, and mark for many of us the heart of his career, a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use."
What the hell does that even mean. Ballard's greatest works were the heart of his career? Ok, that's acceptable, but kinda tautological (does my use of big words mark me as intellectually worthy enough to diss Clute?), at least a roundabout way of saying it. But that last clause, "a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use?" Is he saying Ballard's core work somehow killed itself from exertion? Are they dead to the modern world because of their influence? It doesn't say anything, it's not even bull. It's masturbatory purple prose, that's all. It sounds "pretty" but signifies (big word usage again to satisfy the Corinthian's snobbery) absolutely nothing.
I just picked that one sentence because Clute has arranged this mess in a fashion that makes that sentence/paragraph ready at hand to dissect. You could perform a similar inquest over all the turgid dead weight rotting here. In fact I may do so elsewhere for amusement even though such an exercise would require more care and attention that Clute put into the original.
I think the problem here is an editor, probably in his early 30s, at SciFiWire got cowed by Clute's big "reputation" laid out in his bio blurb and was afraid to offer any real critical input to "a master." Maybe Clute's the sort of personality that bristles "Do you know who I am!" when criticized, but his personality behind the publishing process in immaterial. For an arguably significant publication like The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard to be treated like this is an embarrassment to both SciFiWire and John Clute. I'd say more embarassing than its suprising pageview pandering move to scifi cheesecake photos (not that I don't "read" those "articles" too).
So Corinthian and bob, it's apparent you pride yourselves in possessing sensibilities beyond what one may call the "fanboy tastes" that do admittedly run rampant among SciFiWire's readership and editorial direction. But really, you guys are fawning over an emperor with no clothes here.
I actually find myself wishing Muldfeld reads this just to get his take. At least he'd write something thoughtful and coherent, and I'd actually be curious how a writer like Ballard may fit into Muldfield's politically progressive posthumanism (big enough words for you Corinth?).
By f. at 11:35 AM ON 10/16/09
i can't understand why all you people are reading this in the first place. i can see you waiting every month for a john clute review so you can have another thing to say in the middle of your stoooooopid lives. get a job!
(i mean, you really don't understand waht words mean and what are they for?) (are you actually reading this and writing your replies or your momma is there, reading and typing for you?)
and, yeah, clever and angry answers are welcome. yeah, i don't know either how to write, and so on. just don't complain when the literary establishment says sf is bulls***, because you're allowing them to be right, so thank you very much.
you're just too smart to meet other people.
By Just Me at 12:58 PM ON 10/16/09
Proofread much F.at? Believe in proper grammer, sentence structure and punctuation?
By South Seventh at 1:38 PM ON 10/16/09
I don't read John Clute's articles regularly so perhaps I can offer a fresh perspective.
I was interested in the review because it concerned Ballard. I didn't pay any attention to who wrote it.. About a third of the way through, I found myself scrolling back up to look at the author's name. The sentence structure and diction were so peculiar that I suspected it was written by someone who had acquired English as a second language.
The prose seems to have been assembled rather than written from an experience with conversational English.
The vocabulary really isn't very demanding or a testament to intellectual attainment. When the notion of the unheimlich was raised a second time, I though well at least the fellow has read an essay by Freud or more likely only Ernest Jones' On the Nightmare. Big deal! Both works were read in an undergraduate course on the Gothic in Literature and Film when I was a teaching assistant at Michigan.
By Chris Nakashima-Brown at 2:41 PM ON 10/16/09
I think this is the most insightful analysis of the qualities that power Ballard's narratives that I have read, accomplished in such short space through John Clute's densely packed prose. I loved it, but perhaps it's a bit of literary Marzipan for the Ballardian connoisseur. To me the real shame is that this collection, released in Britain in 2001, only appeared in the US after Ballard died.
By RobKill at 3:05 PM ON 10/16/09
OK, so some of you -- many of you -- don't like Clute's writing, would prefer something more straightforward and familiar. Got it.
We all have writers whose work we like and writers whose work we don't. This is not news.
If you don't like Clute's writing, don't read his reviews each month. Leave them to those of us who do genuinely enjoy his work and find his reviews supremely rewarding.
Yes, there are some of us who feel that way. To me, Clute is one of the only reviewers -- inside or outside the genre -- whose reviews can be as valuable or even more valuable than the works that inspire them. This review, for instance, had my eyeballs (figuratively) glued to the screen, and my breath quickening. It offers moments of insight and clarity like a poem -- moments that I think could not be achieved in a more simplified, unpacked prose.
I don't want to call anyone names or disparage anyone's intelligence or claim that we who enjoy Clute are somehow superior to you who do not. But you should drop the pose that says that if you don't get what he's doing, if his writing doesn't speak to you, then it must not speak to anyone -- it must not have any meaning, must be mere unedited noise passed along by a spineless editor overawed by the Great Man's rep.
It's like tastes in music. Just because you think it's awful doesn't mean the rest of us aren't dancing to it.
By bob at 3:24 PM ON 10/16/09
Don't feed the trolls
By Marty B. at 5:09 PM ON 10/16/09
The challenge remains:
"Ballard's greatest works—Breakfasts in the Ruins of Late Ossuary Capitalism like The Atrocity Exhibition and the "Crashed Cars" exhibition and Crash—were still some years in the future, and mark for many of us the heart of his career, a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use."
Explain that as something other than tortuously bad writing. It's kind of funny that those of us who've had experience in writing classrooms (high fives Angry Johnny, et al) can point to specific instances, we can _quantifiy_ why Clute's writing is so horrible. While the best defense of Clute we have so far is RobKill who apparently got an asthma attack from this.
bob, it's not trollbait, I called on you and Corinthian specifically to explicate to us philistines a specific point of the essay where Clute defecates in his bedclothes. Do it, or prove you're courtier of an emperor with no clothes.
Robkill, the task of the reviewer is not to provide a take on what a Beckettian* skullscape would work like if Beckett were a fanboy, but to assess the value of the assigned or selected text. You can find it groovy, but what did you take away from the piece about Ballard. If you're going to go so far and say Ballard's besides the point, then you have a cowardly writer hiding behind the pretext of a review to actually exhibit his own "literary" talents.
*Chris, Clute actually has you abusing the English language. "Ballardian connoisseur" is an inadvertently funny construction within the context you're employing it. The "ian" suffix exist to denote "after the fashion of something." A "Ballard connoisseur" is what you're after, someone with a taste for Ballard. A "Ballardian connoisseur" would be someone whose connoisseurship is in the style of Ballard ... maybe they too delve into atrocity.
You all can "dance" to Clute if you want, but your dance is not at all in proper compliment to the alleged subject matter. If he's not going to write _about_ Ballard, he should least acknowledge the fact that he is writing _after_ Ballard, and Clute's all too precious to be meaningful choreography just does not fit a writer who wrote "I Want to F--- Ronald Reagan." (I'm guessing the SciFiWire wouldn't allow me to use the full expletive.
By bob at 7:21 PM ON 10/16/09
Marty B.,What is your reason is for criticizing the critic?
Why is that paragraph torturous. I'd read it as Ballard's stories lead to his most productive and important work, which unfortunately (as evidenced by his Clute's heart metaphor) petered out too soon. I'm also reading that Ballard writing meant something more to Clute than fanboy appreciation.
I personally like Clute's essays because he goes deeper and analyses the work more than giving a simple thumbs up/thumbs down. I can't read his work like I read Fastforward; I have to read and reread Clute slowly, in other words I have to work a little but in the end I find value in what he has to say.
You on the other hand throw your classroom experience like a hammer. Look how you framed your remarks about the thirty year old editor then slammed this fictitious person for kowtowing to a great and powerful wizard. You don't know Clute. Your attacks are ad hominem, which is why I think this is all trollbait and i'm biting. Nuff said!
By South Seventh at 10:46 PM ON 10/16/09
I, for one, was particularly amused by Clute's opening sentence: "It is now half a century since J.G. Ballard invented out of whole cloth in 1962 the true sound of what he had been trying to say from the very beginning of his career; and told us the secret of the world."
Any writers might have drafted a sentence like that, but a careful writer would have made some revisions. The sentence doesn't need to contain both "it is now half a century since" and "in 1962." What was he accomplishing by including both clauses? I guess a reader with poor math skills will be pleased to be told that 1962 is more than 50 years ago.
The distinction between "in 1962" and "from the very beginning of his career" is also confusing and amusing. The very beginning of Ballard's career would seem to be about 1956, the year the first two stories in the collection were published. So "from the very beginning of his career" is actually just a fancy way of saying "for the previous six years." Six years is not an immense stretch of time to find one's voice as a writer. Especially, when one considers that elements of the Ballardian voice are--despite Clute's assertions--evident from "Prima Belladonna" onward.
A careful writer might also have decided to refrain from suggesting that Ballard had the ability to invent (Invent?) sound out of cloth. The New Yorker used to republish such prose under the heading stop that metaphor.
This isn't criticism; it's parody of criticism, and I think Clute knows it.
By AngryJonny at 11:32 PM ON 10/16/09
For me, it's the little things Clute does that make me want to hit myself in the head with a hammer. It aches of trying too hard.
"...a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use." What does that even MEAN?
Also, "...and told us the secret of the world." ARGH! It's like Gandalf narrating the history of Middle-Earth.
So, I guess I don't mind Clute's writing as much as I just want to rip off my own skin whenever I read the ends of his sentences.
Personally, I think Sci Fi Wire should hire Marty B. to write reviews. He's intelligent, snarky, and hilarious.
By bob at 11:49 PM ON 10/16/09
Very good SS . "I, for one", is a perfect illustration of your criticism in paragraph two. Just in case the careless reader misses it, I and one are 1. SS you're hilarious.
I, for one, fail to see the distinction between amusing and particularly amusing unless you mean very amusing in which case tickled might have done just as well, unless you meant very, very amusing then tickled pink would have worked.
Its good you speak to Clute's intent, but I for one wonder why he writes parody. Perhaps he thinks he is writing for The Onion instead of good ol' sci fi wire.
In any case I totally agree with you, his disregard for plain writing translates into a particular disregard for Sarah Palin and that just ain't funny.
By Fantastika at 3:34 AM ON 10/17/09
By bob at 11:07 AM ON 10/17/09
AJ, suggest you use larger hammer and finish the job.
"That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please."
Johnny Mandel, M*A*S*H lyrics
By dhfbooks at 11:14 PM ON 10/17/09
Marty's challenge remains unanswered. The various criticisms are accruate and valid. And I agree with them. By the way, the critics of this review are criticizing the review, not personally attacking Clute.
Lastly, Bob, Sci-fi encourages readers to respond, which is reason enough to comment on an awful review.
By Just Me at 11:57 PM ON 10/17/09
I've been one who disparages Clute's writing ability, as well as the comments of others, but in looking back at my own posts I find misspelled words and an arrogance which brings to mind that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Some appreciate his writing and criticism, others find him bombastic, but maybe none of us can see the forest for the trees. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "beauty, like supreme dominion
Is but supported by opinion," but Shakespeare reminds us that "beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, not uttered by base sale of chapmen's tongues." We all have our opinions, but at times they should remain with ourselves. I apologize.
By bob at 9:32 AM ON 10/19/09
There is no challenge, just a complaint over style. Style is a matter of taste. If you followed Fantastika's link you'll see Clute has a accomplished resume. This doesn't place him on a pedestal or above criticism. I means he's earning a living at writing criticism whether you like him or read him or not.
Marty has no challenge. Tortorous is rhetorical, like hitting one's head with a hammer, metaphors and hyperbole. Colorful language bordering on cliches meant to elicit an emotional response or preach to the choir. In other words style. MartyB and the others in his court throw hissy fits because, they want their gruel thin and transparent not meaty and dense.
If you don't agree with MartyB then your a courtier of the emperor with no clothes but MartyB on the other hand reminds me of the princess and the pea. He is the product of an educational system that tries to make you feel good about yourself rather than learn anything. American writing has been so dumbed down that reading anything learned and dense make us feel tortured, and we strike out in anger at the source of our discomfort. Strike away MartyB I'm listening, but Clute ain't and neither are the editors.
Hey Editors, I like Clute, even though MartyB thinks I'm a courtier.
dhbooks, I know they encourage readers to respond; duh! This section is called "Leave a Comment"
By Marty B. at 10:04 AM ON 10/19/09
bob, I wasn't throwing around my teaching experience like a hammer. I just found it amusing that among the "philistines" you and Corinthian ad homenishly paint all Clutes detractors as (and please, spare me the informal fallacy nitpicks, since an incidental remark made in jest is just a hat tip to other participants in the discussion, not a core component of my argument).
As far as your reading of Clute's sentence/graph, you're reading is too simple and suggests a willfully blind rather than deeper understanding of Clute. Basically, you can't be paying full attention to the language right in front of you if you walk away with that reading.
Let me walk you through this, first two and the hyphenated parenthetical clauses, "Ballard's greatest works—Breakfasts in the Ruins of Late Ossuary Capitalism like The Atrocity Exhibition and the "Crashed Cars" exhibition and Crash—were still some years in the future, and mark for many of us the heart of his career," acknowledge that the works within the hyphenation are Ballard's greatest works in Clute's view. You also have the bordering on tautological claim that these greatest works are the "heart of his career." Those clauses taken as a sentence are relatively unproblematic, aside from the tautology Clute fans likely mistake as "genius" and not "extraneous" writing (FWIW I'm all for beautiful writing, and slowing down and dwelling on conundrums of language in relation to existence, yadda yadda. That said, I'm also well aware of the difference between a writer writing in such modes and a writer wasting his reader's time).
Now the problematic final clause, "a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use." You claim, " I'd read it as Ballard's stories lead to his most productive and important work, which unfortunately (as evidenced by his Clute's heart metaphor) petered out too soon." That is not at all what the sentence is saying. Did you ever diagram sentences in grade school. The subject of the sentence is "Ballard's greatest works" which are the things he wrote _after_ the stories collected in volume under review. One of the values of The Collected Stories, in Clute's opinion, is the readers ability to see the earlier experiments that would eventually allow Ballard to write his, for lack of better word, masterpieces.
Now, having pointed out what I see as a massive reader comprehension fail on your part, I find it ironic that you're accusing Clute's detractors of failing to read him when you yourself seem to be unable to capture his elemental meaning. I'll let that be now and get to the problem in that last clause on heart failure, "a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use."
Perhaps, as you attempt to suggest Clute is talking about some sort of emotional heart in Ballard tied to the failing of his physical heart. Now the "fuzzy heartfelt" connotation therein belies Clute's questionable (though I'd say a more accurate grope) grouping of Ballard with a painter like Andrew Wyeth (or Clute's attempt to characterize Wyeth) and a notoriously cold/heartless filmmaker like Kubrick. It also prettifies, in a very un-Ballardian way, the circumstances of Ballard's death. Man died of prostate cancer, so to tie the work to the man, "guts" or "innerds" would have been more apt. That's all besides the point because this "heart," flimsy metaphorical associations with the endpoint of the man's lifespan aside, is clearly a referent to the aforementioned core "greatest works." This is a linguistic structural fact of the words in front of you. Gradeschool sentence diagramming will prove that to you if your reading ability can't recognize that. So when he says this heart "soon began to age out from heavy use" what the heck does he mean? What possible "heavy use" of Ballard's core works, and by what user, led them to "age out?" Is he saying Ballard's core works have also "passed" their literary vitality? Had they had once influence on english letters but have fallen out of vogue? Or, as I contend, is he too focused on making his words look pretty for easily deceived high-brow wannabes to actually bother saying anything?
Mind you, this is only one instance of Clute's sloppiness (and really, bob, citing proofreading errors in blog comments to defend the _professional_ writer is a pretty weak defense, at best your knocking Clute's ability down to that of the commentators you're trying to disparage). That one sentence is most easily discussed because of construction and placement in the essay, but had I the time an volition to dedicate another few thousand words to Clute's review, the sloppiness that produced that sentence can be seen throughout.
As a reader of an online publication that solicits comments, I believe it is well within my right to voice disapproval of writing given the spotlight in that publication. As far as my stereotyping the questionable editorial process that led to Clute publication, it's pretty well known that "fan community" catered publications often aspire to score "names" to boost circulation/readership. Anyone familiar with the editorial process of such publications are also well aware that such "names" are often given significantly greater "kid gloves" handling out of deference to "the name." It's unreasonable to expect full transparency in any publication process (for now at least) but I, for one, am curious how much editorial input Clute invites into his submissions.
By Marty B. at 10:07 AM ON 10/19/09
There's difference between style and structure. Unless you're saying Clute is intentional "sloppy" with his "craft," bob. But I've already used your own words to demonstrate your own lack of reading comprehension here. So maybe you should go lament another top random number Halloween list getting in the way of the purple prose signifying nothing (you do know signification/meaning is more a structural thing than a style thing, right?) you seem to want in your science fiction media coverage.
By Marty B. at 10:24 AM ON 10/19/09
"If you followed Fantastika's link you'll see Clute has a accomplished resume."
Bob, if you actually read the article here (did you?), you'd know that resume's right here. Also, most folks know that one should never justify a failure, like this review, by the writer's previous accomplishments. For someone trying to smack people out by alleging "ad hominem" failings, "argument from authority" is a comparable flaw.
For what it's worth, I knew who Clute was before this essay, or any of his prior essays.
Sure, Clute probably won't read this, many "professional writers" have no concern what their readers think once the check's signed. The SciFiWire's editor may or may not care, but it's always been my experience that they're good with feedback when they get it.
bob, you can shrug it all off as coming down to a "matter of taste". That's called giving up. There are problems with Clute on the level of meaning that you failed to recognize, not because of taste, but because of your failure to understand the basic structure and context of the except I cited.
btw, to "hammer you" with my teaching experience, "it just comes down to two camps of taste" or "it's all a matter of opinion" is classic undergraduate writing 101 fail. For someone with such "sophisticated tastes" as Clute, I'd expect something more mature from you.
btw2, really after seeing my typing here, you think I value thin gruel writiing solely? Way to ad hominem yourself, which brings you back to the philistine aspersions.
Thanks for playing. I'm still game, and I've sincerely enjoyed this so far, but I think at this point, you're played out.
By bob at 10:42 AM ON 10/19/09
MartyB, A quick one I'll be back later.
Matter of taste = giving up.
Prove that's not mere opinion and rhetorical. High school debate.
By Marty B. at 10:55 AM ON 10/19/09
bob,
easy your characterizing the dispute as a matter of taste, meaning you and everyone else is ultimately protected in the argument by the "subjective shield." i.e. "It's what I feel and feelings aren't wrong." If you look at that rationally, that's an absurd claim in itself. That is, there are such thing as inappropriate or wrong feelings.
But you're claiming this all comes down to a matter of opinion when I and others in "my camp" are showing empirical failings in Clute's prose (and you're inability to read Clute's prose in the "challenge example). Ultimately, you're shielding yourself by putting the "it's just my feelings" out there.
There is such a thing as being wrong in the world, and also writing badly. You are in the positon of the former, and Clute (at least in this instance) is in the position of the latter.
Really, your effort to "hold forth" against the anti Clute philistines and subsequent backing into insisting we're just debating matters of taste is classic internet rhetorical collapse. Rhetoric, btw, isn't just style, There is form, and form is subject to criticism and test of validity.
If you want to continue, I look forward to your response. I'm travelling over the next few days, but I will return to this thread when I can.
By bob at 2:04 PM ON 10/19/09
MartyB
Not familiar with "argument by the 'subjective shield'" No need to define - I know about subjectivity - your comments have all been highly emotional and obviously framed which in my book is subjective. As far as rational, I'm sure the MartyB tards agree you are;-]
Aesthetic judgements are are rooted in the subjective no if, no ands, no buts. Standards are agreed upon to determine what's good or bad, but those standards constantly are constantly challenge over time. A lot of people think Thomas Kinkades paintings are the bees knees. I think they are pretty and technically masterful. (I'm a graphic artist ). But they ain't "Good".
I don't know about dotting i's or diagraming sentences, I know "See Spot Run." can be diagrammed and is a "good" (standard) sentence but I wouldn't enjoy reading a essay of sentences like that. You may be right, I can't diagram Clute's sentence in question but I'd have a heck of a time diagramming this one:
"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults."
I love that sentence. (Pynchon; Mason and Dixon)
I don't think I misread Clute at all. It's a personal essay and again it comes down to Clute's not your cup of tea, but I'm sure the editors are pleased people are visiting their website and Clute's raising all this fuss. I'm sure a few grumbly bears won't get rid of him that easily.
By dhfbooks at 9:19 PM ON 10/19/09
Has anybody called for Clute's firing? Has anyone shown their discontent toward Sci-Fi Wire for hiring Clute as a reviewer? The idea that critiquing a review for poor sentence structure, overly dense prose and weak metaphors ("a heart that soon began to age out from heavy use" Are you kidding me, was writing for Ballard akin to snorting cocaine or shooting heroin?) is preposterous. The whole point of the Leave a Comment is to express an opinion. "You shouldn't critize Clute because of his resume" is juvenile at best.
I have met John Clute. He is one of SF's smartest devotees and sharpest critics, which makes this review all the more painful to read. Clearly Ballard is Clute's cup of tea, but his arguement is pedestrian, and hampered by the aforementioned errors (in writing). Overkill comes to mind.
Is the complete J.G. Ballard worth it? Absolutely! But would someone unfamiliar, or familiar, with J.G. Ballard be persuaded to purchase the book after reading this wreck of a review/essay/catastrophe?
By bob at 12:02 AM ON 10/20/09
I never said or shouldn't criticize Clute because of his resume - so back off.
As far as opinion, mine differs: I enjoy complex difficult sentence structure and dense meaty prose - see my Pynchon quote and I loved working my way through Gene Wolfe's New Sun (there's some dense complex sentences for you to hate.) In fact I'm on my second reading. Seeing even more than the first.
I accept that the heart metaphor was a stretch, but a catastrophe - c'mon, like the Tsunami in Indonesia or the Chinese earthquake - get real? And torturous - I think of those poor guys at Abu Ghraib - no way. Overkill don't you think?
What about the second half of the review - pretty sick, almost poetic in spite of the German hiccup. Amazon here I come!
By dhfbooks at 5:29 PM ON 10/20/09
Complex sentences are fine when properly constructed. In the review, the structure is dense for the sake of being dense. It is just plain painful to read (think fingernails across the blackboard).
As for Clute, the point is that nobody, not even the "grumbly bears", has tried to get rid of Clute. Bob, you did say "a few grumbly bears won't get rid of him that easily." Are you implying a secret cabal exists, who are, at this very moment, plotting Clute's demise from Sci-fi wire?
Also, overkill is comparing a debate on the merits of a review (which is a wreck and a catastrophe) to Abu Ghriab. Take your own advice, and get real.
By bob at 7:22 PM ON 10/20/09
dhfbooks
How do you know the structure is dense for the sake of being dense? Please don't bore me with your belief's or your "what else could it be" philosophy - just the facts to support your premise.
I'm not asking you to show me the text is dense because I agree it is dense. I don't presume to the authors intent. I just have the text. Where in this text does it state I intend to be dense for the sake of being dense.
If you don't like dense text so be it. If you think dense text is a catastrophe - my goodness call out FEMA.
By dhfbooks at 10:05 PM ON 10/20/09
The flaws with this article have been clearly stated, and supported, byy numerous examples from me and others. There is no need to repeat them (see above posts).
Truth be told, they have done a better job than I describing the flaws.
What I comment on his how you seem to have a double standard with opinions; it's fine and dandy to express one, as long as you agree with it. Otherwise, out pours the flow of degratory remarks (damn trolls, stoopidity, etc.). Also, if you are bored, that is your problem.
For someone who suggests a disdain for the actions of a previous administration, you certainly practice arrogance and "if you are not with me you are against me" quite well.
The second part of the review is way off the mark, and it's subjective (a trait you disparaged in a previous post). Subjectivity is fair enough in a review, though I disagree with Clute's conclusion. Some of Ballard's best work was published late in his career; Cocaine Nights, The Empire Of The Sun, and Super Cannes. What Clute calls disinterest I belive is Ballard's growth as a writer.
By bob at 12:44 AM ON 10/21/09
I don't disparage subjectivity. It's the basis for art appreciation. Everything human is subjective. Some physicists believe the universe is just noise until a human observes it, then it's ordered - but that's another subject.
I asked you to prove Clute is being dense for the sake of being dense. You stated it like you meant it and in your heart of hearts you believe it, but you can't prove it. Doesn't change anything you think he's dense for the sake of being dense. Nuff said
I'm not bored - you didn't try and prove the density thing.
I thought the conclusion was Clute's later short stories we're weaker than the earlier ones because he found his strength in the novels. So the book is a mixed bag. Which helped me decide not to spend $23.10 (Amazon). I was a fan of Ballard's Wind From Nowhere and Drowned World in ninth grade but after that I found him dull and unexciting. 45 years later I'll try him again with The Best of JG Ballard.
Okay so people here aren't trolling.
By Marty B. at 10:38 AM ON 10/28/09
Bob, people in this thread have demonstrated Clute's failings in this review. You basically ignore the substantiation of those critical remarks in favor of simplifying them into what you characterize as knee jerk reactions against complex writing. Then you defend your position by mentioning other writers who write with complex structures. No one here is saying complex syntax is synonymous with failure. Basically the bulk of this reviews responses say "Clute does this badly" and your defense is "other writers succeed at this." That's pretty weak.
More germane to the subject at hand is Clute's own take on the task of the reviewer. Yes, a literary review or essay is not to simply decree "good/bad" but to spark the audience's imagination regarding the review/essay's subject matter. That this thread is about Clute and not Ballard, or even Clute's views on Ballard (because as evinced, in many places he says nothing) speaks volumes to the failure of this essay despite the simple commercial/market success of it generating "traffic" on the website.
As for your attack, Bob, on my use of the word "torturous." Please, to assume my use of the word likens reading Clute specifically to people actually tortured demonstrates a superficial understanding of language that belies your claimed passion for Clute's sophistication. It's a weak move, but fitting for the backpedaling you've been doing here (i.e. the Wire's readership are not philistines and trolling, rather we're much better at positing arguments than you are.)
By Bob at 1:07 PM ON 12/22/09
MartyB, sorry to bust your self delusion but you haven't substantiated anything or stated anything other than you don't like Clute's writing. You misuse torturous and claim I your reader have a superficial understanding of language. If it was truly torturous, you'd never read this article in the first place, having learned to avoid Clutes writing early on. This of course show's you're merely a pest with an masochistic streak you "loves" reading and complaining about torturous writing.
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Bob:
MartyB, sorry to bust your self delusion but you haven't substantiated anything or stated anything other than you d...More »