The Atrocity Exhibition
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| The Atrocity Exhibition | |
 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | J. G. Ballard |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Experimental novel |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Publication date | 1970 |
| Media type | print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 157 pp |
| ISBN | 0-224-61838-5 |
| Preceded by | The Crystal World |
| Followed by | Crash |
The Atrocity Exhibition is an experimental collection of "condensed novels" (actually destructured short stories and experimental pieces) by British writer J. G. Ballard.
Originally published in 1970 by Jonathan Cape, a revised large format paperback edition, with annotations by the author and illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner, was issued by RE/Search in 1990 (ISBN 0-940642-18-2). The first U.S. edition was published in 1972 by Grove Press under the title Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A. (ISBN 0-394-48277-8). It was made into a film by Jonathan Weiss in 2001.
All the pieces of the book were initially released independently, before being collected into a single volume. With chapter titles such as "Plans for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy," "Love and Napalm: Export USA," and "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan," and by constantly associating the Kennedy Assassination with a sexual event, the work was met with some controversy, especially in America, where it was considered a slur on the dead president's image. Ballard himself claimed that "it was an attempt for me to make sense of that tragic event."
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The Atrocity Exhibition is split up into fragments, similar to the style of William Burroughs, a writer whom Ballard admired. Burroughs, indeed, wrote the preface to the book. Though often called "novel" by critics, such a definition is disputed, because all its parts had an independent life. "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan," for example, had three prior incarnations: in the International Times, in Ronald Reagan: The Magazine of Poetry, and as a freestanding booklet from Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton, all in 1968. Most of the 15 pieces were printed and reprinted as separate items well before The Atrocity Exhibition was published.
Each chapter/story is split up into smaller sections, each only a paragraph long; Ballard has called these sections "condensed novels". There is no clear beginning or end to the book, and it does not follow any of the conventional novelistic standards: the protagonist (such as he is) changes name with each chapter/story (Talbert, Traven, Travis, Talbot, etc), just as his role and his visions of the world around him seems to change constantly. (Ballard explains in the 1990 annotated edition that the character's name was inspired by reclusive novelist B. Traven, whose identity is still not certainly known.)
The stories describe how the mass media landscape inadvertently invades and splinters the private mind of the individual. Suffering from a mental breakdown, the protagonist -- ironically, a doctor at a mental hospital -- surrenders to a world of psychosis. Traven tries to make sense of the many public events that dominate his world (Marilyn Monroe's suicide, the Space Race, and especially the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy), by restaging them in ways that, to his psychotic mind, gives them a more personal meaning. It is never quite clear how much of the novel 'really' takes place, and how much only occurs inside the protagonist's own head. Characters that he kills return again in later chapters (his wife seems to die several times). He travels with a Marilyn Monroe scorched by radiation burns, and with a bomber-pilot of whom he notes that "the planes of his face did not seem to intersect correctly."
Inner and outer landscapes seem to merge together (a Ballardian specialty), as the ultimate goal of the protagonist is to start World War III, "though not in any conventional sense" - a war that will be fought entirely within his own mind. Bodies and landscapes are constantly confused ("Dr. Nathan found himself looking at what seemed a dune top, but was in fact an immensely magnified portion of the skin area over the Iliac-crest", "he found himself walking between the corroding breasts of the film-actress", and "these cliff-towers revealed the first spinal landscapes"). At other times the protagonist seems to see the entire world, and life around him, as nothing more than a vast geometrical equation, such as when he observes a woman pacing around the apartment he has rented: "This ... woman was a modulus ... by multiplying her into the space/time of the apartment, he could obtain a valid unit for his own existence."
[edit] References in other media
- The novel inspired the title of the Joy Division song of the same name from their 1980 album Closer, though Ian Curtis only read the novel after writing a majority of the song.
- Trance Syndicate Records, an independent record label based in Austin, TX has released several compilation records, CDs and videos called "Love and Napalm."
- Merzbow's album Great American Nude took its name from one of the book's chapters, which references a series of nudes painted by American pop artist Tom Wesselmann.
- Two tracks on Gary Numan's 1994 album Sacrifice refer to the book: "Love and Napalm", taken from one of the chapter titles; and "A Question of Faith", which includes the line "I'll be your exhibition of atrocity".
- Experimental rock/jazz band Swivel Stick titled its 1996 album Notes Towards A Mental Breakdown.
- The first single from Patti Smith's 1996 album "Gone Again" is called "Summer Cannibals".
- The Thrash Metal Band Exodus' 2007 album "The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A" was named after the book.
- There is a Northampton, England based grindcore/doom band called The Atrocity Exhibit.
- There is a Portland, OR based industrial/noise band called Atrocity Exhibition.
[edit] Chapter titles
- The Atrocity Exhibition (excerpt)
- The University of Death
- The Assassination Weapon
- You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe
- Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown (excerpt)
- The Great American Nude
- The Summer Cannibals
- Tolerances of the Human Face
- You and Me and the Continuum
- Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy
- Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A.
- Crash! (excerpt)
- The Generations of America
- Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
- The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
[edit] Appendix
- Princess Margaret's Facelift
- Mae West's Reduction Mammoplasty
- Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty
- The Secret History of World War 3
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Atrocity Exhibition |
- The Terminal Collection: JG Ballard First Editions
- The Atrocity Exhibition discussions - An online forum held at the JGB mailing list
