1994/03/01 by Umberto Rossi
Arts and Humanities · #Contemporary Literature and Criticism #Short Stories in Global Literature #Modern American Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.1525/sfs.21.1.0081
A recurring image in J.G. Ballard’s fiction is the Dead City. The deluged London of The Drowned World (1962), the anonymous metropolis in “The Ultimate City” (1976), and the desertified New York City and the tropical Las Vegas of Hello America (1981) represent four specimens of this apocalyptic symbol. A “stratigraphic”—i.e., comparative—analysis of these urban landscapes reveals a profound change in Ballard’s attitude. The first two works mentioned draw their deep structures from an archetypal and anthopological reading of the English literary tradition (T.S. Eliot, Joyce, and Shakespeare). Hello America, by contrast, offers a visionary paraphrase of American history and pop mythology. That novel distinguishes itself from the earlier two titles in transcending the historical horizon, but not in a sense that would make “transcendence” synonomous with “obliteration.” (UR/RMP)