Mark Dery on JG Ballard's memoir
One of my all-time favorite writers, JG Ballard, recently published his memoir, titled Miracles Of Life. Ballard is the author of such fantastic fiction as Crash, Concrete Island, Cocaine Nights, and Millennium People. A year ago, he publicly revealed that he has advanced prostate cancer. The memoir may not be his final book though. According to a post by Mark Dery at Shovelware, rumor has it that Ballard's agent is shopping a nonfiction work, "Conversations with My Physician: The Meaning, if any, of Life." Dery's post is tied to his LA Weekly review of Miracles Of Life. From the review (photo by Paul Murphy/Catfunt):
"Miracles of Life: J.G. Ballard's Pre-posthumous Memoir" (LA Weekly), "JG Ballard: Pathologist of the Postmodern" (Shovelware)In Miracles, Ballard plays analyst to an engagingly garrulous and profoundly self-aware patient named James Ballard. It is a role he would have played in real life if the typewriter had not beckoned. Having returned to England with his mother and sister after the war (his father stayed behind in Shanghai), Ballard encountered Freud and, in books on abnormal psychology, Freud’s unruly grandchildren the Surrealists. Both landed in the drawing room of his middle-class English mind like “a stick of bombs,” he recalls. “I felt, and still do, that psychoanalysis and surrealism were a key to the truth about existence and the human personality, and also a key to myself.” In 1949, he began his studies at King’s College, Cambridge, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist, but after two years, realizing that he was more interested in writing than psychiatry, he dropped out.
Still, shrinks abound in Ballard’s work, many of them poker-faced mouthpieces for the author’s ironic polemics: Dr. Wilder Penrose in Super-Cannes (2001), arguing that “a perverse sexual act can liberate the visionary self in even the dullest soul”; Dr. David Markham in Millennium People (2003), coolly observing that in Blair’s England “a vicious boredom ruled the world for the first time in human history, interrupted by meaningless acts of violence”; Dr. Tony Maxted in Kingdom Come (2006), opining that psychopathy is “the only guarantee of freedom from all the cant and bullshit and sales commercials fed to us by politicians, bishops and academics.”
In a very real sense, Ballard did become a psychiatrist, albeit a dryly ironic one, at ease with his philosophical bipolar disorder — now profoundly moralistic, now exuberantly amoral, now both. All of his dystopias are in truth pathological utopias...
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No comments yet? It's J.G. Ballard! Somebody write something clever already. I named my youngest cat after him!
Thanks for using my JG Ballard pic and for remembering the picture credit and link. Not everyone who's used it recently (cough cough hint hint) has been quite so considerate.
"In a very real sense, Ballard did become a psychiatrist, albeit a dryly ironic one, at ease with his philosophical bipolar disorder â now profoundly moralistic, now exuberantly amoral, now both."
In a very real sense, according to this article, Ballard didn't become a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor. Maybe, just maybe the author means, "psychologist", but even that's a stretch.
and just what is "philosophical bipolar disorder"? As someone very familiar with the illness and of the frequent and common misconceptions about the illness, "philosophical bipolar disorder", even as a metaphor, doesn't make any godamn sense. Describing amorality and morality in terms of bipolarity makes a kind of sense, but not as it relates to the mood disorder called bipolar disorder.
I think Ballard's a wonderful writer and loved his semi-autobiographical book, Empire of the Sun, and would be curious about the real parallels between that story and his memoir. I have little interest in reading the rest of this review, though, after reading this poorly considered and uninformed statement.
#2 Catfunt: Just posted a response to yours on my blog, but will re-post here in an attempt to reach you, since ((cough cough hint hint)) your blogspot blog, like so many blogspot blogs, doesn't provide any contact info.
"Paul: Apologies for using stealware or, as Mark Pauline of SRL used to call it, "obtainium." As is too often the case, I found it washed up on the Web's terminal beach, without identifying marks---the proverbial "orphaned work." Regrettably, I can't afford a permission fee, but I'd be happy to add the appropriate credit/copyright line and a link to your site. Or, if you'd rather, I can simply remove it. Best, M.D."
#3 Jed Alexander:
"In a very real sense" need not mean "in a literal sense"; used figuratively, as it is here, it can mean "in the most profound sense." As I argue at some length, Ballard is engaged in much of his fiction (and, for that matter, in his reviews and interviews) in diagnosing diseases of the postmodern soul. For my money, he's doing a surrealist's version of the very psychoanalytic diagnosis employed by psychiatrists and psychologists alike. Thus, he's a poetic psychiatrist, in my book, delving deep into the psychopathologies of postmodern culture. To note that Ballard can't be a shrink, even in the metaphorical sense, because he is not, in fact, a medical doctor is to succumb to the most mind-numbing literalism. Likewise, to insist that it makes no sense to describe as a "philosophical bipolar disorder" Ballard's both/and embrace of both extremes of the morality/amorality binary is to have a mind so killingly literal that it kills poetic license dead on contact. Either that, or to be so "very familiar with the illness" that any use of the illness as metaphor cuts a little too close to the bone.
and since Ballard studied medicine with the intent of becoming a psychiatrist, the notion that he
You're made certain assumptions about my ability to grasp metaphor that I don't feel are merited, but I can see how you might have such a reaction.
You're using "in a very real sense" to mean, "in a profound sense". I get that. I just think you happened to be stretching the metaphor a little thin.
Bipolarity and bipolar disorder are two different things both metaphorically and literally. Amorality and morality have a binary or bipolar relationship, it's true. Likening moral polarity to this specific mood disorder seems to me to be a confusing metaphor for what you're describing, even in a post-modern or poetic sense, because bipolar disorder isn't really bipolar in a comparable way to a philosophical dichotomy. It seems to me to be a misuse based a common misconception of the ailment. The word "bipolar" itself is misleading and I can see how the common misconception, that bipolar disorder describes two distinct and separate extremes rather than a continuum of mood related symptoms that are often neither mania or depression, could lead you to this kind of comparison.
Now my initial reaction to your metaphor was, it's true, one of personal frustration, because of how often the term is misused and misunderstood. This doesn't mean that any use of the term as a metaphor is offensive to me. But since mental illness in general is so often misinterpreted and misunderstood, most such uses are misuses, and I don't feel, serve to illuminate.
I don't think you have to understand every nuance of something to use it as a metaphor for something else. I'm not saying that. but I do think it's important to understand conceptually the thing you're using for comparison, the thing itself, the ailment, bipolar disorder, and not just the word "bipolar".
You're made certain assumptions about my ability to grasp metaphor that I don't feel are merited, but I can see how you might have such a reaction.
You're using "in a very real sense" to mean, "in a profound sense". I get that. I just think you happened to be stretching the metaphor a little thin.
Bipolarity and bipolar disorder are two different things both metaphorically and literally. Amorality and morality have a binary or bipolar relationship, it's true. Likening moral polarity to this specific mood disorder seems to me to be a confusing metaphor for what you're describing, even in a post-modern or poetic sense, because bipolar disorder isn't really bipolar in a comparable way to a philosophical dichotomy. It seems to me to be a misuse based a common misconception of the ailment. The word "bipolar" itself is misleading and I can see how the common misconception, that bipolar disorder describes two distinct and separate extremes rather than a continuum of mood related symptoms that are often neither mania or depression, could lead you to this kind of comparison.
Now my initial reaction to your metaphor was, it's true, one of personal frustration, because of how often the term is misused and misunderstood. This doesn't mean that any use of the term as a metaphor is offensive to me. But since mental illness in general is so often misinterpreted and misunderstood, most such uses are misuses, and I don't feel, serve to illuminate.
I don't think you have to understand every nuance of something to use it as a metaphor for something else. I'm not saying that. but I do think it's important to understand conceptually the thing you're using for comparison, the thing itself, the ailment, bipolar disorder, and not just the word "bipolar".
Why doesn't bOING bOING's interface allow commenters to edit their comments, I wonder? This was a hiccup: "and since Ballard studied medicine with the intent of becoming a psychiatrist, the notion that he"
As for your point that "bipolar disorder isn't really bipolar in a comparable way to a philosophical dichotomy" because "bipolar disorder describes two distinct and separate extremes," well, morality and amorality seem perfectly extreme to me, a textbook example of polar opposites? The NIMH definition of bipolar disorder as characterized by extreme mood swings ("Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function') would seem to legitimate the metaphoric use of the term to describe philosophical stances (morality, amorality) that are poles apart.
But we're boring bOING bOING's madding crowd stiff by belaboring this.
I'd contend that the term, in popular parlance (meaning: figurative use), is widely taken to mean: ping-ponging between extremes, just as the term "schizoid" was once used to express the same sentiment.
"But since mental illness in general is so often misinterpreted and misunderstood, most such uses are misuses, and I don't feel, serve to illuminate." Again, the metaphor strikes too close to home, I fear. If we inhabit bipolar bodies, the usage can never be figurative. Interestingly, Vivian Sobchack makes much the same point about Baudrillard's applausive response to Ballard's fantasies, in CRASH, of "invaginating" wounds. (http://www.depauw.edu/SFs/backissues/55/forum55.htm) For Sobchack, gnawed to the bone by cancer, such fantasies are a morally obscene luxury she can't afford. But one man's metaphor is another man's lived experience. I refuse to police my metaphors accordingly, despite the knowledge that they may come back to bite me one day (say, if I become bipolar).
Ok, last clarification here, if anyone is still reading. You took my quote out of context. I didn't say:
bipolar disorder isn't really bipolar in a comparable way to a philosophical dichotomy" because "bipolar disorder describes two distinct and separate extremes,"
I said:
"It seems to me to be a misuse based a common misconception of the ailment. The word "bipolar" itself is misleading and I can see how the common misconception, that bipolar disorder describes two distinct and separate extremes rather than a continuum of mood related symptoms that are often neither mania or depression, could lead you to this kind of comparison."
Note, the opposite of what you're implying. It's right there in your own definition:
"a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function"
"Unusual shifts" that can't necessarily be characterized as either mania or depression, as one extreme or the other, but shifts in mood that are variable and unpredictable but not necessarily at two opposite ends of the spectrum. The word "bipolar", if taken literally, unfortunately inaccurately characterizes the illness.
Your assertion that this "hits too close to home", that somehow a familiarity with the illness is equal to having the illness, is first, insultingly presumptuous, and second, no less literal-minded than my assertion that Ballard is not a psychiatrist.
The popular use of the word "schizophrenia" or "schizophrenic" to describe someone who has something akin to multiple personality disorder is equally irksome to me. It just further contributes to misconceptions in general about what mental illness is. Its figurative use similarly seems based on a false and dangerous notion.
I would police my metaphors only in so much as I would want to reference something I understood, rather than something about which I only understood the popular misuse of.
#2 Catfunt #4 Mark
Cheers Mark for adding pic credit. Just wanted to acknowledge that there was no way you would have known the picture had already been separated from its rightful attribution when you found it. Best, Paul