pretty much every time i talk to chris nakashima-brown (CNB) he asks me if i’ve read any j.g.ballard. to which i reply that i read ’empire of the sun’ as a kid and failed to get more than ten pages into ‘high-rise’ and some anthology or other.
so, just so i won’t seem like a craven idiot the next time i run into CNB, i extracted ‘the best short stories of j.g.ballard’ from the austin public library. right away i ran off to ruby’s BBQ (this is texas, where every experience must be mediated through meat) and paged to the end with all the goodies: ‘the assassination of john fitgerald kennedy considered as a downhill motor race’, ‘the atrocity exhibition’, ‘plan for the assasination of jacqueline kennedy’, and ‘why i want to fuck ronald reagan’.
luckily all the stories were short. how short you ask? two BBQ brisket tacos short.
i feel that ballard’s sexualization of machinery (and ronald reagan for that matter) shows a deep understanding of the structure of eroticism. you know how they say that you should write from what you know? i never have any sex in anything i write.
i envy writer’s who can distill sexuality from innanimate objects — or dolphins which can copulate with rocks and sea turtles.
sigh.
