"At any given time, I'm aware that my mind and imagination are setting towards a particular compass point, that the whole edifice is preparing itself to lean in one way, like a great ramshackle barn."
— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)
Author
Date
1984
Metaphor
"At any given time, I'm aware that my mind and imagination are setting towards a particular compass point, that the whole edifice is preparing itself to lean in one way, like a great ramshackle barn."
Metaphor in Context
BALLARD
Yes, so the unity of the enterprise is forever there. A whole universe can be bounded in a nutshell. Of course, why one chooses certain topics as the subject for one's obsessions is a different matter. Why was I obsessed by car crashes? It's such a peculiar idea.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, why were you?
BALLARD
Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born. That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one's conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones.
INTERVIEWER
Your work does at times seem to possess a sort of prophetic quality. Are you aware of this as you write?
BALLARD
It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead. I don't mean anything too portentous by this. I suppose people--certainly imaginative writers--who consciously exploit their own obsessions do so in part because those obsessions lie like stepping-stones in front of them, and their feet are drawn towards them. At any given time, I'm aware that my mind and imagination are setting towards a particular compass point, that the whole edifice is preparing itself to lean in one way, like a great ramshackle barn.
Yes, so the unity of the enterprise is forever there. A whole universe can be bounded in a nutshell. Of course, why one chooses certain topics as the subject for one's obsessions is a different matter. Why was I obsessed by car crashes? It's such a peculiar idea.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, why were you?
BALLARD
Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born. That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one's conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones.
INTERVIEWER
Your work does at times seem to possess a sort of prophetic quality. Are you aware of this as you write?
BALLARD
It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead. I don't mean anything too portentous by this. I suppose people--certainly imaginative writers--who consciously exploit their own obsessions do so in part because those obsessions lie like stepping-stones in front of them, and their feet are drawn towards them. At any given time, I'm aware that my mind and imagination are setting towards a particular compass point, that the whole edifice is preparing itself to lean in one way, like a great ramshackle barn.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
J. G. Ballard, "The Art of Fiction, No. 85," interviewed by Thomas Frick, Paris Review, 94 (Winter, 1984).
Date of Entry
04/19/2016
