Years ago, when I was in my early 20s, I picked a copy of JG Ballard's Cocaine Nights out of a bargain bin in a London bookstore. Over the years, it has become a book I return to; the spine is cracked, the corners are bent over, even the pages are slightly yellowed - all the signs of an oft-read and beloved book. I'm not sure what I expected when I purchased it, but it's silver cover, with the suggestion of a firework (or an explosion) and flashes of turquoise and fuchsia drew my eye. I'm sure that I didn't expect Ballard's utopian/dystopian visions of gated communities and the interaction/interdependence of community, crime and deviance. For reasons that I don't know, and therefore cannot explain, and despite my love of Cocaine Nights, I didn't read any more of Ballard's works until a conversation with a colleague informed me that these themes were recurring features of Ballard's novels.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I was wandering the bookstores of Oxford on a biblophile's day out with a friend (and for bookstores, read Blackwells) when I came across a shelf of Ballard's books. Having dithered for a while. trying to decide which one to go for, I eventually purchased Vermilion Sands. This is the book that kicked my arse and made me want to start blogging about books. This first 'proper' post then, is for Ballard, for creating Vermilion Sands and for giving me an insane, vivid, richly textured world. A world that I long to visit, but only if I'm certain that I can leave.
It's a world in which (anti)heroes fly gliders into clouds to sculpt them, for the entertainment (and dollars) of, as the blurb has it, faded movie queens and their retinue. A world in which florists breed plants (chloro-flora) for the music they produce, as much as for their foliage and blooms. A world in which metal sculptures rampage and grow, Triffid-like, and even when destroyed and melted down, return in metal joists of new buildings, to wreak havoc afresh.
A world of seas and lakes made of sand, where yachts, inhabited by ghosts of Mariners and Dutchmen, sail the granular waters. A world where reefs grow from quartz crystals and sand rays fly through the skies and skim the thermal surf, encrusted with jewels and hunting on their mistress's command. A world in which clothes are sculpted from fabrics that respond and reform in tune with the wearer's emotions (divas, beware!).
And the women. The women of Vermilion Sands. The damaged, beautiful, vain, lithe, fading/faded, bejewelled women. The temptresses. The child stars, now grown into young women. Their eyes, their skin, their hair. All in chauffeured Rolls-Royces. All accompanied by stern French secretaries. All searching. Women from myth and legend, drawn to Vermilion Sands and Lagoon West, living in mansions, surrounded by their art, sculptures, clothes. Trapped by their wealth, their beauty, their admirers and by the echoes of who they had been. Such women, such creatures. Scattered with jewels, owners of pets carved from sound, muses of poets, femme fatales all.
And what of the men? Heroes, villains, hedonists? Narrators and observers, certainly. Admirers and lovers, often. Scryers of decay and prophesiers of doom. Cultural historians, reflecting on the past but unable to see a future, their vision obscured by the dust chased up by the Rollers, as the belle dames sans merci speed down the exit ramps leaving Vermilions Sands behind them, chasing their dreams or nightmares further down the coast.
Structurally, it's debatable whether Vermilion Sands is a novel or a collection of short stories with the utopian/dystopian Sands as the leitmotif, sounding its siren song throughout. It doesn't really matter though, read it in chapters, as individual stories, or in one sitting as a beautiful/insane novel. Just read it and dream.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I was wandering the bookstores of Oxford on a biblophile's day out with a friend (and for bookstores, read Blackwells) when I came across a shelf of Ballard's books. Having dithered for a while. trying to decide which one to go for, I eventually purchased Vermilion Sands. This is the book that kicked my arse and made me want to start blogging about books. This first 'proper' post then, is for Ballard, for creating Vermilion Sands and for giving me an insane, vivid, richly textured world. A world that I long to visit, but only if I'm certain that I can leave.
It's a world in which (anti)heroes fly gliders into clouds to sculpt them, for the entertainment (and dollars) of, as the blurb has it, faded movie queens and their retinue. A world in which florists breed plants (chloro-flora) for the music they produce, as much as for their foliage and blooms. A world in which metal sculptures rampage and grow, Triffid-like, and even when destroyed and melted down, return in metal joists of new buildings, to wreak havoc afresh.
A world of seas and lakes made of sand, where yachts, inhabited by ghosts of Mariners and Dutchmen, sail the granular waters. A world where reefs grow from quartz crystals and sand rays fly through the skies and skim the thermal surf, encrusted with jewels and hunting on their mistress's command. A world in which clothes are sculpted from fabrics that respond and reform in tune with the wearer's emotions (divas, beware!).
And the women. The women of Vermilion Sands. The damaged, beautiful, vain, lithe, fading/faded, bejewelled women. The temptresses. The child stars, now grown into young women. Their eyes, their skin, their hair. All in chauffeured Rolls-Royces. All accompanied by stern French secretaries. All searching. Women from myth and legend, drawn to Vermilion Sands and Lagoon West, living in mansions, surrounded by their art, sculptures, clothes. Trapped by their wealth, their beauty, their admirers and by the echoes of who they had been. Such women, such creatures. Scattered with jewels, owners of pets carved from sound, muses of poets, femme fatales all.
And what of the men? Heroes, villains, hedonists? Narrators and observers, certainly. Admirers and lovers, often. Scryers of decay and prophesiers of doom. Cultural historians, reflecting on the past but unable to see a future, their vision obscured by the dust chased up by the Rollers, as the belle dames sans merci speed down the exit ramps leaving Vermilions Sands behind them, chasing their dreams or nightmares further down the coast.
Structurally, it's debatable whether Vermilion Sands is a novel or a collection of short stories with the utopian/dystopian Sands as the leitmotif, sounding its siren song throughout. It doesn't really matter though, read it in chapters, as individual stories, or in one sitting as a beautiful/insane novel. Just read it and dream.
Posts
