>As a boy, Empire of the Sun was a revelation. Although I obviously
>don't share Ballard's biography (West Philly instead of Pacific War
>era Shanghai, an explosive car crash instead of a downed Zero as a
>pivotal childhood moment) I immediately identified with his
>matter-of-fact way of describing the most terrible things and the
>essential fragility of...everything.
Reading Ballard was a revelation for me too. I once found a review of the Re/Search issue dedicated to him in a newspaper left on a San Francisco bus. I got off the bus and went looking for it and have been reading Ballard ever since. Recurring childhood memories of staring fascinated at a wrecked car in front of a truck stop in the New Mexico desert, the wreckage filled with detritus that included beer cans and nylons, not to mention memories of car wrecks I was in myself, took on a new logic after reading Crash.