Money's style

“Nothing Happened. It never does, but it will. The revolving door shoved me into the lobby, and the desk clerk bobbed about in his stockade.”  (15)

            What immediately makes this unique to me is the way the main character is almost pushed through the world without a true drive.  He is going through the motions in this scene and allowing the world to just move him along.  He does this in the word choice of the description of the door “shoving” him through.  There is also a nod to this idea in the sentence before with the contradiction and how although he feels that his life does not go anywhere, it will because something else is pushing it along. The uniqueness here is shown in how the narrator controls how the reader sees the world and how bleak it may all seem.  This is the relationship the reader finds themselves in because they have no other viewpoint other than that of the characters to go by.       

Cronenberg's Film Crash

The David Cronenberg adaptation of Ballard’s Crash finds itself in an odd place film-wise.  Watching the movie was almost nothing like reading the book in my opinion.  The main thing about the movie that left me so disjointed was the mere fact that the audience had almost no access to the mind of the character of James Ballard whereas the book is completely set within his mind.  In a way this makes leaves the film feeling lacking and unconnected to the events taking place.  At times we just see Ballard staring at things in the film without any explanation and this hurts the viewers understanding of his inner fantasies and sexual desires.  There is something to be said that the film suffered from the fact that it was for ‘mass’ audiences and thus it is censored in certain areas.  Although Cronenberg went father than many directors would with the graphicness of the moments in the movie it is nowhere compared to the written work by JG Ballard.  While I am full aware that it was an adaptation I constantly thought throughout the movie that if I had not read the book I would most defiantly be utterly lost with the plot and motives of the characters, save for Ballard’s wife who is far more perverted than Ballard in the film while the opposite is true for the book.  There is one thing that Cronenberg nailed for me directly on the head, and that would be the world where this all takes place.  While it is Canada, only reviled by the cars license plates, it still has that blandness that JG’s ‘London’ did.  Overall the film may have a similar tone to the book to me it did not have the same grasping qualities that the book had, I did not understand the film Ballard the way I did the one in the book, not that I fully understood that character either.        

Ballard’s Intent

            J.G Ballard’s Crash is a book full motif.  Its major one in my opinion is the use of the James Ballard sexuality and the integration of technology into his fantasies.  He is constantly using the automobile as a vessel for his sexuality and his fantasies.  J.G’s intent with this use of sex and cars seems to be that he is trying to describe how the world is becoming to close to their technology and how easy it can for sex and technology to combine.  In this way I think J.G is being satirical and making his statement towards society.  Ultimately I believe that this story is a tragedy, not in the classical sense but maybe in the way that although it is satirical it ends and begins in death and the character does not become necessarily better in the end.  He becomes more of the sexual addict that he is in the process of becoming whole book.  While this may make argument that he has “improved” in this way throughout the book it is a bad type of approval by our standards. In my opinion he and Vaughn are different people, while one could argue they are the same person in the vagueness of Ballard during the death scene of Vaughn, I don’t think that this was the purpose of J.G.  I think that Vaughn needed to be a different person completely in order to influence Ballard the way he did.           

Ballard Attempt

              

Ticking 

            It only becomes quite at the moment where their heart stops that irritating noise.  I just would like it to all stop.  When I am home is the only time I can be at peace.  The two-foot foam filled walls keep all the awful noises out and the good ones inside.  The humming of my computers flawless processing unit sings a wonderful lullaby to me as I enter this beautiful home.  Whenever I leave these small walls and gleaming personal computer apparatus I find my self in a temper that does not fit my life. 

            The first time I found peace was when I was only a young boy.  I had received my first in a line of many computers. The first night the song that the wonderful hum made within the walls of my room almost put me to sleep, something was off however.  There was this other beat I could now notice that was out of sync with the glorious hum of the spinning of the sixty gigabyte hard drive and the snapping of electricity through the wires within the power supply.  It was a awfully out of tune apparatus that beat out of tempo with this electronic symphony.  It went at a mild fifty-five beats a minute, far off from the scale of my orchestra.  I wandered the hall of the cheap condo and found the noise was that of my brother as he lay in his crib.  That thud thud was ruining every sound from my glorious room.  I had to stop it.  Placing the pillow over his face made for an easy solution and holding him down was far simpler than I thought. Once I found that the tempo to my piece had be returned to one that flowed with the instruments of electricity better I fond no reason to stay by his lifeless side.                      

Crash 1-4

         The first four chapters of J.G Ballard's Crash throw the reader right into the deep end of the mind of the main character and his fantasies.  The book acts as a great example of the moral ambiguity that transgressive novels bring to readers.  Ballard (the character) describes his sexual fantasies without any remorse or apologetic tone, he sees them as no different from any other function that one could take part in.  He can't and won't stop thinking about sex on almost every level, it is very much a compulsion for him and his desire never seems content. 
         This story does have an odd setting taking place in a London that does seem a bit altered and during a vague time. My guess on time would be around when in was published (1973) only because the hospital seems to use apparatus that date the time period.  For instance when talking about the catheters he says they are made of metal where as now they would use some type of plastic for draining his knees, also this correlates to the car crash as well because most modern cars are made of a type of plastic where the ones he speaks of are made of mostly metal. 
         The reader is put in the world of the overly sexually charged characters,  and thrown into a head rush of intensity that does not let up.          

NABOKOV

There is a way in which Nabokov writes that follows the idea of polyphony in the way that the narrator seems to be absent from all the events in the story.  The narrator acts as more of a figure to describe the actions of the characters who themselves hold more power in the "conversation" between the two. This is to say that the characters do more then the narrator ever could.  this follows the ideas of polyphony because it creates a distance to the reader because we become more of an spectator than a traveler along the journey of the story.  This point is emphasized in the portion where Natasha and Wolfe are telling each other the imaginative stories that they want to impress with.  they take the reader out the equation by having this conversation and holding back information much unlike most characters would.  Most of the time we would be told more information by the narrator but because of this distance we are in the hands of the characters.     

Cut Up Poem

Ingat silt flows.

Glossy syntax brings,

growing rectitude but wants to editorialize.

A maggoty shelf of fear above,

the waning floor of

test bungalows.

Major Leonard’s replacement-

-a bioengineering raging of circulation.

Within a sheen church-

-ripple, relation, Hallelujah!

Response to WIlliams Burroughs interview and Selections

I thought that the interview and selections showed a good amount of the personality of Burroughs and his views on his writing and the world as he sees it.  I think the way he speaks about politicians in particular was very interesting because he seems to have removed himself from any side at all.  He says, "In other words, I'm bored by politicians" he is speaking about how they are "dull" to him and they don't interest him.  this however is different from his general views on what he calls the Machine.  He thinks ahead here and talks about how the "southern bell" is changing and on its way out.  I think the oddest thing way a few of the later question speaking on the idea of Psi devices and ways of communicating with them.  It said earlier that he was a science fiction fan and its funny to here someone of the era wanting to "play" with such devices and use them for a writing mechanic.