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Miracles Of Life: Shanghai To Shepperton: An Autobiography
by
J.G. Ballard
Miracles of Life opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J.G. Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp. In the intervening chapters Ballard creates a memoir that is both an enthralling narrative and a detailed examination of the events which would profoundly influence his work. Beg...more
Paperback, 278 pages
Published
2008
by Harper Perennial
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The first part of this memoir is very charming. Ballard was raised in Shanghai during the 2nd World War, and it's fascinating how he lived an extremely wealthy life among the poor Chinese. Then the Japanese invaded China - and life turned on him in a brash manner. Yet he has no regrets about his past - in fact it seems he enjoyed particular aspects of Japanese rule as a child. Ballard has the ability to see the lightness that is totally dark and back again. He carries that with him regardin...more
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Velvetink
rated it
* added a bit more to my review;
Ballard was born the same year as my father and they couldn't be more different. My previous impressions of what Ballard was like have flown out the window with this memoir - I think I used to stick him in some kind of pop art/warhol category after reading Crash, and I couldn't have been more wrong...although on an artistic level Ballard's writing - particularly Crash and The Actrocity Exhibition go into groundbreaking realms of simulacra as Baudrilla...more
Ballard was born the same year as my father and they couldn't be more different. My previous impressions of what Ballard was like have flown out the window with this memoir - I think I used to stick him in some kind of pop art/warhol category after reading Crash, and I couldn't have been more wrong...although on an artistic level Ballard's writing - particularly Crash and The Actrocity Exhibition go into groundbreaking realms of simulacra as Baudrilla...more
JG Ballard is one of my favorite fiction writers. I read Crash and several of his other highly imaginative works when I was younger. Crash is my favorite, a controversial concept novel about sexual fantasies mixed with car crashes. Ballard explains the genesis of that book in one brief chapter. But the bulk of Miracles of Life is his description of growing up in Shanghai, including 2.5 years in an internment camp with other British expatriates in the early 1940s, when Japan had invaded China. He...more
I read Ballard's science-fiction in my science-fiction-reading days (otherwise known as 'my youth') but have not yet read 'Empire of the Sun', which I understand is his biographically-inspired masterpiece. However, this short autobiography is superb. It is the most understated, low key yet gripping account of a really extraordinary life of lost innocence, spanning sharply contrasting eras and experiences. These include a childhood with emotionally unavailable parents, sybaritic ex-patriate li...more
There are many people whose names are mentioned in all the right places, and for whom I have uttmost respect, and yet I am ashamedly ignorant of. Nick Cave, Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon fall into this category, and so does J G Ballard.
The only previous book of Ballard’s that I have read is The Atrocity Exhibition (prompted by Joy Division’s song of the same name) which was an anarchic and unstructured glimpse into a mind that was darkly subversive yet held fiercely traditional v...more
The only previous book of Ballard’s that I have read is The Atrocity Exhibition (prompted by Joy Division’s song of the same name) which was an anarchic and unstructured glimpse into a mind that was darkly subversive yet held fiercely traditional v...more
‘Miracles of Life’ is a potted autobiography written as JG Ballard was living in the shadow of prostate cancer. It begins with his formative years living in Shanghai before being interned along with his parents during the Second World War where he witnessed much cruelty meted out by the Japanese. These experiences went on to inform his brilliant semi-autobiographical novel ‘Empire of the Sun’, later filmed by Steven Spielberg.
In unsentimental prose it goes on to trace his beginning...more
In unsentimental prose it goes on to trace his beginning...more
Normally I prefer biographies to autobiographies, believing - to quote Bart Simpson describing Krusty's tome - they are largely "self serving with many glaring omissions". However I would thorougly recommend Ballard's memoir.
A series of essays rather than a laborious trek through his life, Ballard describes the crucial incidents that made him as a man and him as a writer. Even though he is dealing with the more mmundane, his genius for seeing the ordinary in a truly unique ...more
A series of essays rather than a laborious trek through his life, Ballard describes the crucial incidents that made him as a man and him as a writer. Even though he is dealing with the more mmundane, his genius for seeing the ordinary in a truly unique ...more
Beautifully written and more overtly heart-felt than his fiction (which I adore) which usually maintains a studiously detached note. It covers his early life in Shanghai through to his detention by the Japanese from '43 to '45 (and the basis for 'Empire Of The Sun') through his marriage, the early death of his wife, and caring for three children as a single father (written with so much affection) and author to the brief final chapter discussing the cancer that would soon kill him.
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Moving, fascinating autobiography of a tremendously original writer. We know much of his background from Empire of the Sun, but this memoir fleshes some of the dark corners of the psyche that gave us the opaque dreamscapes of Crash, The Unlimited Dream Company and many others. It's clear that most of Ballard's obsessions, such as gated communities, empty swimming pools, irrational violence, are direct throwbacks to the shock of his upbringing in the horrorshow of wartime Shanghai. He balanced th...more
J. G. Ballard's story is familiar to us all, how as a boy in Shanghai before and during the war he was interned with his parents and other British and European nationals. I've always admired imagination in writing. What Ballard did with those experiences and how he represented it in Empire of the Sun, to my mind, demonstrated a high level of imagination. It, and the later novel The Kindness of Women, in which he brilliantly covers the same material in the opening 3 chapters, draw heavily on t...more
Just as in his novels, Ballard here is brief. Writing with the knowledge that his prostate cancer is controlled but ultimately fatal, he sketches his Shanghai childhood, his (brief) university days, and most importantly his life as a single father raising three children in a London suburb. The Shanghai section is the strongest narrative, but the feeling he has for his family is deeply felt and beautifully conveyed. A major biography must be on its way, but in the meantime this is a good way to g...more
A forthright, unsentimental account of the life of one of the great visionary science fiction writers of our time. The first half of the book is the best, taken up with Ballard's unconventional childhood in wartime Shanghai (including a surprising and moving account of several years in a prisoner-of-war camp). The second half is a series of snippets of his adult life, dealing primarily with his roles as writer and father. The latter half of the book was not as strong as the first; it could ha...more
After overcoming the confusion that Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women are only semi-autobiographical I found Miracles to be a deeply moving account of a man who knows death is just around the corner and is taking stock of the incredible events of his life.
As with the life of Jim Ballard, I didn't want the final page to end. A fitting prologue to the finest English author many people have never heard of. Greatly missed.
As with the life of Jim Ballard, I didn't want the final page to end. A fitting prologue to the finest English author many people have never heard of. Greatly missed.
Very entertaining read, a book that touches on a very wide range of subjects, like growing up in a war and the workings of the modern literary and art world. It is really well written, surprisingly easy if you consider Ballard's avant-garde status. His life has been an impressive one but he writes about it almost with understatement, with sudden parts of poetic prose. Most impressive were his descriptions of pre-war Shanghai and his experiences of growing up there, and later in life his search f...more
I really enjoyed this book. It was very personal, well written and you almost leave it thinking - "This is the guy who wrote "Crash"? He had an incredibly interesting life. Very interesting from a sociological perspective - his thoughts on life in Shanghai as a boy and in the internment camp and how this shaped his life. His feelings on the bombs dropped on Japan.
Ballard's final book, alas. Quite a bit different than his fictional autobiography, Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women. Some details that stick out in my mind: He was the most radical of the New Wavers but didn't partake of 1960s craziness because he was raising 3 kids as a single dad. He did indeed have a grand old time in the Japanese interment camp, where one of the other kids was future cult TV actor Peter Wyngarde.
Fascinating read about Ballard's childhood in prewar Shanghai. Great potted history that I found really interesting about the British ex pat life. Interestly I didnt realise this author had also written Crash and Empire of Sun and I will certainly look them out now. Loved it.
Ballard's autobiography provides a wonderful insight into the events and circumstances that made him the person, and the writer, he is. He brings his past to life, from an internment camp in Shanhai to a snowy Canadian air base to bringing up three children in a Shepperton flat, all in his beautiful style that is visceral without being crude, moving without being sentimental.
Great autobiography. Beautifully brief and to the point. A beautifully executed exercise in concision. His experience of returning to England after the war especially resonated with me. All in all a great read. Highly recommended.
Thoughtful, sentimental and intelligent, Ballard's autobiography is a search for the boy he lost in Shanghai and then maps out why he became the man and writer that he is.
Bettie
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
BBC7 listeners
Shelves:
autumn-2010,
published-2008,
autobiography-memoir,
far-east,
chinese-root,
wwii,
war,
plague-disease
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I didn`t realize I`d ordered the abridged audiobook until I received it in the mail as part of a clearance books sale. Anywhow, I gave it a listen, and it is excellent indeed.
It`s amusing to hear the gentle English voice of the narrator try to pronounce the name Moose Jaw. And I admire that Ballard spent 50 years living in the same suburban house.
It`s amusing to hear the gentle English voice of the narrator try to pronounce the name Moose Jaw. And I admire that Ballard spent 50 years living in the same suburban house.
Beautiful, Poignant, Sad Book. One of only 4 books that ever made me weep. A Great man. The world is a poorer place. This man was a prophet and a visionary. Great Book.
fascinating autobiography. never knew ballard's background was as a sci-fi writer, though i could've guessed from crash. he definitely grew up in an exceptionally free (ironically) time in shanghai, even in the internment camp, and his tellings of poverty and class are visual and visceral. i was quite surprised by how unnervingly honest he is about his relationships with his parents, wife, friends. but the main thing that emerges is his unconditional, lavish love for his children. i came out of ...more
Fantastic account of an author's inspiring life.
It was a decidedly nice book.
Un Ballard lineare e pacificato. Troppo. Così lontano dal corpus ancora da maneggiare con cura delle sue opere. A mio parere il Ballard "raccontato" migliore rimane ancora quello di quei ragazzacci di Re/Search( http://www.anobii.com/books/RESEARCH_J._... ); qui invece tutto tace, tutto si allinea, nessuno sguardo obliquo con la vista periferica, banali occhiali, noiose prospettive.
The lightest of his autobiographies, even though it was written when he was next door to death. More matter and less art, but he's earned that by now.
Ballard's accounts of his time at the Lunghua internment camp outside of Shanghai and his first experiences of postwar England are sharply written and well worth the read. I feel I would have gotten more out of the second half of this memoir if I were more familiar with his science fiction writing. But overall, a solid read and worth checking out.
A great insight into Ballard's life and mind - explains where his most important books were born, and how close to his life Empire of the Sun was.
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J.G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard) was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and a Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF.
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