I hope I'm not thick
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I think I'm a pretty bright sort of a bloke. I got a good degree in English Literature from a very respectable university. I'm pretty knowledgable and can grasp fairly difficult concepts. But I'm not ashamed to admit (I am ashamed really) that this book floored me.
I appreciate it is experimental and understand that it probably gives great pleasure to those who "get" what Ballard is doing. But it is extremely obscure, written in a highly-florid, conceptual style and I found it unreadable. Instead of becoming involved with it I ended up just looking at words on a page and although I could appreciate the semantics of each sentence, getting any kind of notion of what was happening across the novel escaped me.
So should you be considering purchasing the book my advice would be this: If you like poetry you might like this. If you enjoy the deciphering of poetry, enjoy the subtext and enjoy the playing with ideas and forms of literature, then you might like this. Otherwise, you probably won't.
I have not read any other books by this author but do intend to. I hope that The Atrocity Exhibition was just very self-indulgent on his part and that I do not waste another eight quid on my next Ballard.
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The 'atrocious' exhibition
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'The Atrocity Exhibition' is a very apt title, because I have never read a more atrocious book. 'Experimental' translated means 'Avant-Garde', He mentions rape, torture, paedophilia, people who are aroused by Vietnam's child napalm victims and people who are aroused by viewing car crashes. As if this weren't bad enough, he writes the book in a willfully obscure, difficult, awkward style - hence the 'experimental' label.
Essentially what Ballard is trying to do is dazzle us with his expansive vocabulary, but it cannot change the fact that the novel is meaningless. I for one am not impressed by someone who uses ten-syllable words continuously.
Barely a paragraph goes by where he isn't making some crude or unpleasant outlandish sexual reference, even to the point where he is implying that anyone who is an anti-war protestor is sexually inadequate. There are numerous of these bizarre and disturbing thoughts.
I fail to see how anyone could 'enjoy' this novel, as it is not the kind of novel you can enjoy. Once you have come to terms with his style of writing, the novel just becomes tedious. I do not think there is an overall point. Avoid this obscene and tedious novel at ALL costs!
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Truly visionary
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Will Self describes this book, on the cover, as representing "the zenith of the experimental novel in English. Ballard's marginalia are a tour de force, a wholy original work in their own right." This annotated edition with an excellent introduction by William Burroughs and Ballard's own chapter notes, written with over twenty years hindsight, further enhances a novel that already made Ballard stand out as one of greatest soothsayers of the twentieth century. Obsessively documenting his obsessions and preoccupations, this novel cuts deep into the fabric of contemporary society. Not an easy read but an invaluable testament of our time, now with added historic perspective. Every good novel should change your life - this will alter your perceptions in an astonishing and radical manner. Not to be missed.
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Best book I ever read!
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Yes, this is a difficult and complex book. Yes, it is dense, cryptic and multi-layered. Yes, it lacks a clear linear plot. Yes, it is packed with complex and repetitive images. It is also Ballard's finest work, a collection of frames from a film that evokes all the obsessions and symbols of the latter years of the twentieth century.
And to answer the last reviewer, yes, I think it is great.
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amazing - the geometry of virtual un-reality
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ballard himself said that every paragraph of this frightening, obscure and obtuse puzzle-fiction is a condensed novel. it's true and puts most other writers to shame: experimental and totally transgressive.
the imagination and wayward-intelligence behind the ideas here might lead you to think it was written by an maverick escapee of a mental asylum (maybe travis, trabert, talbolt or traven)but ballard, like orwell and huxley, knows exactly what he's talking about.
there's abandoned airfields where recreations of the jfk assassination take place, studies of the geometry of bits of car in relation to calculated sexual poses, the encyclopedia of imaginary diseases, dali, max ernst, the death-crashes of james dean, albert camus.
first published as a collected 'novel' in 1969 it embodies the start/end of the space race, psychopathology of the modern icon and the possibilities of celebrity car-death.
the annotations by ballard in this edition are very helpful in creating an understanding of some of the less obvious content without detracting from the ferocity of the ideas.
'atrocity exhibition' is the only title this book could possibly have.
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