[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem (rather important missing word restored)


On May 23, 2007, at 6:05 AM, - phatic wrote:
JG Ballard on growing up in Shanghai, the cruelty of contemporary Cannen , and life in suburbia Londonium. 

http://download.itv.com/southbankshow/jgballard.mp3
I can't make up my mind whether the heading was an accident or an invitation for me in particular to listen to JG Ballard going on about how people who aren't like him... aren't like him. So, in doubt, I accepted the invitation. Ballard has suffered; I should think your wife suddenly dying of pneumonia and leaving you with three young children to raise might well send you scatty. And the childhood trauma recalled in "Empire of the Sun" was no small thing. But the man was born into a snobbish colonial elite, learned its way of talking and now goes on about how awful life is when you the planet with the lower middle class on the one hand--people who like to go shopping and replace old windows with better ones-- and on the other hand with folk who enjoy the French Riviera and want to bash in the heads of immigrants.
Generally I like loonies and am in favor of eccentricity; but snobs I find hard to take. Maybe it's just the part of me I least like.
I am, by constrast, very much in favor of Holly Bachelor and her Asteroid: 

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=805432007

My favorite line is about particle physics being, "a good laugh."
Did you hear the one about the neutrino that went into a supercolliding bar with a rabbi, an elf and three drops of superglue? 

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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