AWOL

[hirez]

"We're living in the present that JG Ballard imagined for us." (Will Self, badly remembered by JH-R)

... Which makes perfect sense to me, of course.

Fine stuff. SB Show theme unchanged since the time it was on far too late and besides you've got school in the morning. However, MBragg looks to have aged thirty years in ten minutes, which was a bit

Comments

[tails_redux]

Just caught the end and wondered if you'd be watching it.

[hirez]

Oh yes. Was attempting to explain Ballard to a set of jolly good chaps this arvo, which is very hard to do w/o starting to sound like a complete nutter.

[spride]

Bragg's an interesting case. He comes off as being really up for High Culture but when it gets to details he really retreats to what he knows: 19th C English Literature. Listening to him on In Our Time getting way out of his depth and then turning snappy. If you care to go fetch the podcasts, the ones on Prime Numbers and Dark Matter are classics of that genre.

[quercus]

We watched "Lost" instead, which really makes one pine for a decent bit of Ballard or even Stephenson, rather than US hack TV.

Piling random unconnected rubbish into a lovely beachfront set is _not_ literature, for any level above "Ooh, weird shiny thing!" fanboy.

[hirez]

I can't watch it - the blasted programme just drives me up the wall.

Anyway, I've already read 'The third policeman' and if that bunker thing with associated data-entry isn't 'Five and three-eights on the lever' then I'm deSelby's 'Country Album'.

On the other hand, them teevee people wheel JGB onto $arts_programme whenever he's got a book out and go through the same loop each time.

Still, it's pleasing to be entirely correct about 'The atrocity exhibition' and Martin Amis.

[reddragdiva]

I am most upset to have missed JGB doing a talk on Thursday because I had a housemove to organise. Pah.