SOURCE: Carr, C. “J. G. Ballard's Crash Course in Modern Civ.” Village Voice Literary Supplement 45 (May 1986): 7-8.

In the following essay, Carr emphasizes the role of the body and the notion of inner space, among other themes, in Ballard's work.

Out there cruising in the endless suburb is a man who could never have been a boy. There is no past. And he can't make sense anymore of the conventional behavior he didn't question yesterday. Suddenly he's exhilarated by a fantasy of traffic deaths. Or obsessed with the genitalia of certain celebrities. Or drawn inexorably back to his apartment block, where he and the neighbors will battle to the death, fashioning clubs from their elegant furniture. He doesn't know why. The “hero” in J. G. Ballard's fictions, a secure white male professional (architect, doctor, TV producer), often inhabits a land much like our own, one he helped to...