Second interview with J. G. Ballard

The second of my re-translations of interviews with J. G. Ballard is now up on Ballardian. Entitled “It would be a mistake to write about the future”, this one was originally conducted in 1976 in Shepperton.

It’s packed with unusual comments: Ballard describes the way he incorporates cinematic techniques into his fiction in more detail than elsewhere, and it’s fascinating to see how his conception of the way the close-up works anticipates Deleuze’s ideas in his Cinema I & II of 1983 and 1985.

The most intriguing aspect of this interview, though, is the stress which Ballard places upon the moral imperative to take not only one’s subjects from the present, but also one’s methods. Elsewhere he’s dismissed any suggestion that he’s a moralist, but this comment might explain why critics have mistaken him for such.

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