Disappointing to have to return from our Easter hiatus with a Death Notice, but such it is, as we mark the passing of J G Ballard, literary titan of the twentieth century and probably the first writer I was able to think of as more than just The Person Whose Name Is On The Book.
I am inclined to remember where I was when I read a book more readily than what was in the book itself. Thus, "The Drowned World" to me will always be inseparable from the Echuca Caravan Park. Which, taking that thought one step further, given the current plight of the no longer Mighty Murray River, it would have been more appropriate for me to have been reading "The Drought" there. (Whereas "The Drought" was actually read at 166 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, where its title was also borrowed for the name of a band of which I was briefly a member, but which had a longer and richer history without me.)
Reynolds, meanwhile, has posted a collection of dated but evocative (is that what you-all mean by "hauntological"?) covers of Ballard paperbacks. How does he do that?
