Last weekend, one of our most important fiction writers died: J.G. Ballard, who had the experimental resonance of William Burroughs but without Burroughs's irksome imprecision and structural flaws. In his time, Ballard was a model innovator, a pioneer who managed never to sacrifice craft or coherence. Few recent novelists have wrought descriptions as specific, perfect and evocative as Ballard's: John Hawkes, Robert Coover and Nabokov, perhaps. For the moment, I can conjure no others. Salient information may be found here. Another hero vanquished: Inevitable but surprising. Never having shaken my childhood admiration, I thought Ballard's cultural presence would be as lasting as the Sungnyemun Gate's. Curse that unseen genie in my Tang packet for proving me right.
