R.I.P J.G.

I must say goodbye to Jim Ballard. He's given me a lot of reading pleasure over the years. And, as E@L points out, he did get the Martin Amis seal of approval.



Ballard at home in Shepperton, in 1988. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty

A more fitting obituary by Michael Moorcock.

Some quotes and an interview with Claire Walsh...

"I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you."

"Success, an even more demanding challenge than failure."

"People want to save the whale and the seal because they know that sooner or later the human being is probably going to be next on the list."

"My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker."

"Sex times technology equals the future."

"The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction."

"You can do all the housework in five minutes if you don't make a fetish of it."

"Women have always been suppressed, and never given the chance to flourish intellectually. When the first female Darwin or Freud appears it will have an astonishingly liberating force, and could change the world in an almost religious way. Perhaps this is the messiah we're unconsciously waiting for."

"Two subjects have always fascinated me: women and the bizarre."