John Gray & Will Self on JG Ballard

video of talk on “The veneer of uniform ordinariness that comprised the concrete-glazed suburbs of author JG Ballard’s home was arguably one of his greatest sources of literary inspiration. Part of Ballard’s brilliance could be attributed to his uncanny ability to peer beneath the facade of the everyday to reveal the fascinating (and often, terrifying) mess within. Through expanses of glass and concrete, Ballard muses the shiny vacuousness of identikit shopping centres, the bloodless expanses of arterial roads, and the vague, bleary amorphousness of those in-between places that are neither urban nor rural; the edgelands.”