The Atrocity Exhibition

To call this book a novel may be a bit of a misnomer. It may be a series of interconnected short stories. It may be, as the author claims, a number of “condensed novels”. Or they may be a series of short vignettes under a blanket tarp. What it can be clearly called is, “experimental fiction”. If you’re not interested in a book that plays with forms, themes, functions, and reality, then you will not want to read this book.If you are worried about things like plot or character development then you are reading the wrong book. There is no clear beginning or end to the book, and it does not follow any of the standard novel conventions. The main character, Talbert (?) changes name with each chapter, just as his role and his visions of the world around him seem to change constantly. If you insist on a plot, then you must look on it as a man having a series of nervous breakdowns in a mental hospital, or a man who is manipulating reality to cause World War Three.If you are wondering how such a book became an underground classic, it's all due to shock value. Like Gravity’s Rainbow and Naked Lunch, the unconventional prose is riddled with sexually explicit descriptions and activities. So much was packed in that the book was brought up on various obscenity charges and banned in a host of countries, thus immortalizing it.The author himself suggest reading it by randomly flipping pages and only taking in those snapshot scenes which catch the eye. This might be the best way, as going through it sequentially is a chore. Another flaw is that this is an obviously boomer book to appeal to the boomer generation. Constant references to people, images, and events from the sixties dates the book severely. While older, well read, people will recognize most of them, but you’d be surprised how many have forgotten them completely.The book has seen various publications over the years, and various parts have been printed in magazines. Each addition seems to add a little to the whole of the book. Every “chapter” is followed by annotations (many of which are more interesting than the actual text), while the RE/Search edition added a series of stimulating photographs and illustrations. So you’re exact experience with this book will differ greatly depending on which edition you read.

To call this a novel is a bit of a misnomer. Ballard himself recommends that first time readers just flip the book open to a random page and start reading when they find something interesting, and that is pretty much what it reads like; a collection of bizarre descriptive passages written in a detached, clinical manner. The author is not in the least bit reluctant to examine, re-examine, and re-re-examine his pet obsessions of sexualized car crashes, sexualized highway overpasses, sexualized celebrities, etc. Interestingly enough, with all of this sexual underpinning, "Atrocity Exhibition" is neither erotic nor titillating, and the label of "pornography" is far from accurate unless descriptions of clinical intercourse and disconnected / abstract breasts and other body parts on billboards are what gets you off. Taking into account when this book was written (the modern footnotes by the author are fantastic and my favorite part of the book), Ballard does indeed anticipate and predict the corrosive effects of our current circa 2017 popular culture, especially when it comes to the confluence of sex, celebrity and violence... sort of. The reader really does need to bring their own experience and insight to this party to flesh out the rather sparse and tenuous "plot" such as it is. As others have noted it is very tedious if not impossible to determine which character is which as apparently the same characters are referred to by multiple names and their motivations, if they have any, are abstract and in some cases make no sense whatsoever except to themselves (and, I assume, Ballard, although maybe not). Of the books I have read over the years, only "Naked Lunch" bears resemblance to "Atrocity Exhibition". Personally, I find Burroughs's book to be rather more well written and with longer passages as well which stand on their own as "mini novels". Furthermore, from a sexually transgressive standpoint, "Naked Lunch" buries "Atrocity Exhibition". Perhaps even when freeing his mind onto the printed page Ballard was still under the sway of that powerful English Restraint while the proud American degenerate Burroughs was plumbing deeper processes of degradation. "Atrocity Exhibition" is definitely worth a read and it likely deserves re-reading, but if I were to be asked if I enjoyed it or even worse if I were to be asked to explain it? Well, the three stars pretty much sums it up; "It's Okay".

Ballard shows him-self as important author of fantasy genre. But here he doesn't write a romance, but he constructs a typical explication about several arguments related to his production of romances. All those "escamotages" which represented the factors of success of "Crash" and other principal books are descript with his particular style. So we can see the importance of role of the single words, noting as the sound is relevant for the attention of the lector, but also the "catarsi" has a sense for the developpement of the action. Therefore the violence leaves the "scenario" to a Greek aspect of tragedy.

I purchased this item and read it while the UK was all about the Royal Wedding. I couldn't help wishing Ballard were alive to say something about that...Be that as it may, this edition is absolutely superb: not only it includes an interview with the author and a short story ("The Smile", written in 1976), it also includes a series of notes from Ballard himself at the end of each chapter. I find these notes extraordinary in every way. Not only for helping in understanding a few things that, for us who were born long after the book was written, may not be as familiar as they were in the '70s, but especially for the things Ballard says about our world, today. It's 2001-Ballard reading what 1970-Ballard wrote. Very enlightening.My suggestion, for those who haven't read Ballard but want to, is to begin with "Crash". It helps to have that in mind when reading "The Atrocity Exhbition", even if it was written a few years later. For die-hard fans of Ballard, this is a must.

A great version of an Incredible Book

In acceptable condition, considering its age, but a little more damaged than I was expecting. Binding/cover coming off, revealing spine.

I wanted to read this book to see how the author created consciousness. I wasn't interested in a narrative or characters. Instead I wanted the words to become images and inspire imagination. If you read the book like this it works. Some of the text feels like a TV on with no one listening, or a radio stations that spilling dull conversation. Repetition instills meaning over and over again. The reviews on here mention pornography, sex, medical procedures, car crashes, cars. But this books is ideas, thoughts and juxtapositions. A good example of methodologies any aspiring writer should read. Not everything in this world , or more importantly, consciousness should or has to make sense.

Not easy to read, and makes its way through a whole lot of cultural icons in an apparently anarchic fashion - but the book, when you get the whole of it into your head, suddenly bursts open with an almost incredible vision of how things could be so different. Better? You tell me.

All JG Ballard's preoccupations are here in nuggety lumps of jigsaw pieces and slides. There's a forensic deliberation softened by some beautiful language. As much a series of mini essays as a novel.

This is an unsettling book. Not a comfortable read. Having said that you can see humanity is still on the same path that Ballard describes. The obsession with celebrity, porn and violence continues.The annotation helps as some of the characters referred to in the book have faded from history.

Quite a surreal book. Not sure I understood it completely but here goes...The sexual pathology of the main protagonist is revealed in a series of psychosexual experiments involving the positioning of objects in the geometry of space time. These are attempts to unlock the latent sexuality of, among others, a motorway overpass, a particular arrangement of wrecked cars, or the angle between walls, along with the re-enactment of the (real or imaginary) deaths of the famous in an effort to achieve a sexual ideal; often personified by Elizabeth Taylor.In each chapter the main character's identity is viewed from another angle, another facet of his personality, and we accompany him through his apparent psychoses. Even his character name changes throughout and sometimes the events and characters appear only in his mind. Other characters, such as Dr Nathan who is our window of rationality in this surreal world, or Karen Novotny the eternal victim, provide their necessary roles in the psychodrama.I enjoyed reading this book and, having only read one other J.G. Ballard (The Crystal World), will no doubt read another of his work. However, I felt that The Atrocity Exhibition, good though it was, (ironically) didn't really reach the climax I expected. Maybe I just need to read it over again.The annotation in this edition by J.G. Ballard is essential - although my copy does not have the illustrations mentioned above.SGL