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Sasha's Reviews > Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun
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Part of my Fall 2017 Best Of Chinese Literature project; more here, and a cool
"The reality that you took for granted was just a stage set," is what JG Ballard has to tell you. He learned it as a child, when World War II came to his home in China. "Anyone who has experienced a war first hand knows that it completely overturns every conventional idea of what makes up day-to-day reality." This semi-autobiographical book is about that overturning.
Young Jim adapts immediately, and that's the thing about people according to Ballard, who's always written about "whether we are much different people from the civilized beings we imagine ourselves to be." (Well, that and carfucking.) Ballard is unsentimental about Jim, who unsettles everyone around him just by how quickly he acquiesces to the new reality. He's gross, in his shameless hustling and scheming and stealing, and in his actual, emaciated, infected body. It's not just that he refuses to die; it's that he seems comfortable as an animal. As we age we start to think that we really are civilized, and adults in these internment camps in WWII needed to think it would all be over someday, that they'd be able to return to civilization. Jim shrugs civilization off so easily that everyone else gets vertigo.
Here's a startling detail about this book: the major thing Ballard changed from his own life was that he wrote his parents out of it. In Empire of the Sun Jim is immediately separated from them, but the young Ballard never was. The reason is that their presence screwed up the truth of the book; Ballard couldn't find a way to convey how unable they were to protect him in the internment camp. I don't know if that blows your mind as much as it blows mine: a reality so savage that parents are irrelevant.
So Ballard is the Toto to civilization's Oz: he saw behind the curtain early, and he's talented enough to write down what the wizard looks like back there. It's gross.
Quotes are all from an interview at the back of my edition. I can't find it online, sorry.
"The reality that you took for granted was just a stage set," is what JG Ballard has to tell you. He learned it as a child, when World War II came to his home in China. "Anyone who has experienced a war first hand knows that it completely overturns every conventional idea of what makes up day-to-day reality." This semi-autobiographical book is about that overturning.
Young Jim adapts immediately, and that's the thing about people according to Ballard, who's always written about "whether we are much different people from the civilized beings we imagine ourselves to be." (Well, that and carfucking.) Ballard is unsentimental about Jim, who unsettles everyone around him just by how quickly he acquiesces to the new reality. He's gross, in his shameless hustling and scheming and stealing, and in his actual, emaciated, infected body. It's not just that he refuses to die; it's that he seems comfortable as an animal. As we age we start to think that we really are civilized, and adults in these internment camps in WWII needed to think it would all be over someday, that they'd be able to return to civilization. Jim shrugs civilization off so easily that everyone else gets vertigo.
Here's a startling detail about this book: the major thing Ballard changed from his own life was that he wrote his parents out of it. In Empire of the Sun Jim is immediately separated from them, but the young Ballard never was. The reason is that their presence screwed up the truth of the book; Ballard couldn't find a way to convey how unable they were to protect him in the internment camp. I don't know if that blows your mind as much as it blows mine: a reality so savage that parents are irrelevant.
So Ballard is the Toto to civilization's Oz: he saw behind the curtain early, and he's talented enough to write down what the wizard looks like back there. It's gross.
Quotes are all from an interview at the back of my edition. I can't find it online, sorry.
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Cecily
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Dec 07, 2017 12:18PM
Ouch. This review packs a punch, especially the bit about parents. I've seen the film several times, and read his autobiography (of which this period is a small part), but you make me realise I ought to read this, too.
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Hey, Cecily! Thanks. It's crazy, right? Really made me sit down for a minute, like, wooha let me just process this world here.
So... his parents were in the camp with him? I only saw the movie and it left deep scars in my psyche.
Yeah, they were right in the camp with him all along. They remained estranged throughout his life; if I remember right, he explained that it wasn't some sort of dramatic estrangement - just that they never could provide any of the protection or services parents are meant to provide, so there was simply something missing. Some crucial deep root that never grew.
Ballard's interview in the Desert Island Discs radio show on BBC Radio 4 is one of the most touching I've ever listened to. I really encourage you to listen to it. It's available on the radio's website.
