The Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard

[Omphalos]

At one point in my life, pretty early on in my exploration of the genre actually, I was an enthusiastic fan of J.G. Ballard's works. My father had a few in his meager SF collection, and I absconded with them about the time I found Dune on the same shelf. I became an even greater fan after watching the amazing Spielberg movie of the first book of Ballard's autobiography, Empire of the Sun, a film I still love to this day. One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when the allied fighter plane buzzes the Japanese runway unexpectedly near the end of the film, right after the atomic bomb has gone off in Japan. ILM did the sound for that scene, I believe, and in 70mm surround sound, it's like you are there. But since the late 80's when I think I really started to develop an eye and ear for SF, Ballard's work for me lost a bit of its luster. I was more interested in at the time in hard SF, and quite frankly as I matured I found that there were parts I just read over before. In my mind I became more and more confused about this author. I always have a hard time categorizing his work. The best that I can do is to say that he had a penchant for catastrophe stories, but to refine the categorization any further than that is quite difficult. Sometimes I think that Ballard is "post-cozy catastrophe," but that really does not work very well, and may be too fetishistic a description for non-genre readers. Certainly, he has a very different formula then Wyndham or any of his contemporaries had. Instead of "cozy," Ballard's description of post apocalyptic landscapes are surreal, sublime, and frightening on a level that is one or two steps shy of H.P. Lovecraft. I think what I find so confusing about Ballard's work is that he often came up with a world-wrecking idea, but when he told his story it was often tight and highly focused on a small group of people in a very small geographic area, and more often than not the main story hinged on some sort of unrequited love or sexual frustration. That is what was going on in this week's novel, The Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..

 

[GOLLUM]

Well, that was a good review. I've got Drowned World as part of the Masterwork series but I haven't read it yet, so thanks for the rekindling of interest.

 

[Omphalos]

Thank you, Gollum. Its always nice to get comments. I really appreciate it. Hope you get to the book soon. Ballard is really a great author.

 

[Fried Egg]

Interesting review Omphalos. I read this book myself last year and I have mixed feelings about it. I too am not sure that I fully understood the character's motivations at play either. I'm not quite convinced that it is a failing of the author though; this is another one of those stories that is crying out for a re-read.

I do feel that you may have answered your own question though, regarding Keran's motivation for staying behind in the lagoon. It was his awakening DNA memory that was drawing him (and others) to this emerging environment, something that was trumping his need for his modern needs that suited an environment now dead.

 

[Omphalos]

Interesting review Omphalos. I read this book myself last year and I have mixed feelings about it. I too am not sure that I fully understood the character's motivations at play either. I'm not quite convinced that it is a failing of the author though; this is another one of those stories that is crying out for a re-read.

Hmmm. Not sure but it sounds like you may be confused as to my overall opinion, since you used the word "though." Please forgive if you arent. But I didnt think that it was a failure either, Fried Egg. I was just pointing out that as a very young man I realized that there was more there that I was not seeing, but that I do now, I think. Now I think it was superb. Here is what I said in the review about that:

The truth is that Ballard never does bother to clue in his readers about his characters motivations at all, but that is not really a failure. In fact, in hindsight it seems to me to be a triumph.

I though that Ballard did a fantastic job staying within the confines that he set down for himself, both in this book and more broadly, with that article in New Worlds (which I have actually read too).

I do feel that you may have answered your own question though, regarding Keran's motivation for staying behind in the lagoon. It was his awakening DNA memory that was drawing him (and others) to this emerging environment, something that was trumping his need for his modern needs that suited an environment now dead.

Though the real reason that Kerans did what he did was probably (at least in my personal opinion) more realted to a personal sacrifice. Ballard used him as a Jesus figure. Consider, his name is like "Kyrie," which is to me may be allegorical for Jesus, or God, and he took a stand that resulted in his death. Strangeman also tried to crucify him, but he was rescued by Riggs, and Strangeman was clearly an allegorical and maybe an actual reference to Satan.

What Bodkin said was just a voo-doo like scientific opinion. There clearl were other things going on. Which is why I think its all pretty ambiguous. Incidentally, that ambiguity is one of the reasons I loved this book so much. You can spend hours talking about it like this.