Isolation — Martin Amis on J.G. Ballard’s novel The Drowned World, at The Guardian:
Ballard gives The Drowned World the trappings of a conventional novel (hero, heroine, authority figure, villain), and equips it with a plot (jeopardy, climax, resolution, coda); but all this feels dutiful and perfunctory, as if conventionality simply bores him. Thus the novel’s backdrop is boldly futuristic while its mechanics seem antique (with something of the boys’-own innocence we find in John Buchan and CS Forester). In addition, Ballard’s strikingly “square” dialogue remains a serious lacuna. Here as elsewhere, his dramatis personae – supposedly so gaunt and ghostly – talk like a troupe of British schoolteachers hoisted out of the 1930s: “Damn’ shame about old Bodkin”, “Capital!”, “Touché, Alan”. (Cf DeLillo, whose dialogue is always fluidly otherworldly.) We conclude that Ballard is quite unstimulated by human interaction – unless it takes the form of something inherently weird, like mob atavism or mass hysteria. What excites him is human isolation.
(The jacket for the 50th anniversary edition, pictured above, was designed by Darren Haggar)
Avatars of Reaction — New York Times film critics A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis discuss comic book movies:
A critic who voices skepticism about a comic book movie — or any other expensive, large-scale, boy-targeted entertainment — is likely to be called out for snobbery or priggishness, to be accused of clinging to snobbish, irrelevant standards and trying to spoil everyone else’s fun.
What the defensive fans fail or refuse to grasp is that they have won the argument. Far from being an underdog genre defended by a scrappy band of cultural renegades, the superhero spectacle represents a staggering concentration of commercial, corporate power. The ideology supporting this power is a familiar kind of disingenuous populism. The studios are just giving the people what they want! Foolproof evidence can be found in the box office returns: a billion dollars! Who can argue with that? Nobody really does.
Hmm… Isolation and misery… Really must try harder with this blogging lark…. Have a good weekend.