Ballard, J. G. | William M. Schuyler, Jr. (essay date 1993)
William M. Schuyler, Jr. (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: Schuyler, William M., Jr. “Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man: Love, Death and Art in J. G. Ballard's Vermilion Sands.” The New York Review of Science Fiction, no. 57 (May 1993): 1, 8-11.
[In the following two-part essay, Schuyler attempts to amend David Pringle's pioneering study of Jungian psychological symbols used commonly by Ballard.]
Just as the present holds perils that you did not face in the past, the future will hold threats from which you are for the moment mercifully exempt. Even now, you must speak and act carefully lest you be noticed and thereby elicit some bizarre act of violence. But J. G. Ballard imagines an even more dangerous future in which your semi-sentient clothing could respond to the emotional turmoil of an angered lover and crush you to death. Or perhaps your psychotropic house, traumatized by the violence of a previous owner, will try to suffocate...
[The entire page is 5640 words long]
Navigate
