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J. G. Ballard
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The Atrocity Exhibition Paperback – January 1, 2001

by J G Ballard (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 325 ratings
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First published in 1970 and widely regarded as a prophetic masterpiece, this is a groundbreaking experimental novel by the acclaimed author of 'Crash' and 'Super-Cannes', who has supplied explanatory notes for this new edition. The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The central character's dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, pscyhopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoils to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Flamingo
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    5.12 x 0.52 x 7.76 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0007116861
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0007116867
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Flamingo; Annotated (R edition (January 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007116861
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007116867
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.52 x 7.76 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 325 ratings

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J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
325 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lalo Lambda
5.0 out of 5 stars superb edition
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2011
Verified Purchase
I purchased this item and read it while the UK was all about the Royal Wedding. I couldn't help wishing Ballard were alive to say something about that...

Be that as it may, this edition is absolutely superb: not only it includes an interview with the author and a short story ("The Smile", written in 1976), it also includes a series of notes from Ballard himself at the end of each chapter. I find these notes extraordinary in every way. Not only for helping in understanding a few things that, for us who were born long after the book was written, may not be as familiar as they were in the '70s, but especially for the things Ballard says about our world, today. It's 2001-Ballard reading what 1970-Ballard wrote. Very enlightening.

My suggestion, for those who haven't read Ballard but want to, is to begin with "Crash". It helps to have that in mind when reading "The Atrocity Exhbition", even if it was written a few years later. For die-hard fans of Ballard, this is a must.
8 people found this helpful
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Edoardo Angeloni
5.0 out of 5 stars A great author explicates the sense of his tragedies.
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2018
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Ballard shows him-self as important author of fantasy genre. But here he doesn't write a romance, but he constructs a typical explication about several arguments related to his production of romances. All those "escamotages" which represented the factors of success of "Crash" and other principal books are descript with his particular style. So we can see the importance of role of the single words, noting as the sound is relevant for the attention of the lector, but also the "catarsi" has a sense for the developpement of the action. Therefore the violence leaves the "scenario" to a Greek aspect of tragedy.
One person found this helpful
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david southwood
4.0 out of 5 stars Another classic riddled with typos.
Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2013
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It's hard not to like this radical literature, but the typos which litter the page go some way to putting the reader off. I can't understand why the Kindle people can't move beyond some automated system for converting books to the kindle format.
2 people found this helpful
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DAH
5.0 out of 5 stars IMPRESSIONS and IMPRESSIONS
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2020
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Brilliant, clever, and irritatingly intellectual.

My perspective: The Atrocity Exhibition is a collection of sexual polymorphism
connected to several relationships.

Abstract and surreal, it's like taking a blood-pressure reading
on a dozen characters simultaneously, and all of them generating
the same pulse that keeps the story going.
6 people found this helpful
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Plamen Petkov
5.0 out of 5 stars ... a collaboration between JG Ballard and Phoebe Glockener look like? This will be the result
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2018
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what could a collaboration between JG Ballard and Phoebe Glockener look like? This will be the result. Disturbing, brilliant, fantastic. Who cares what the normies would say? Buy it if you are a real intellectual.
2 people found this helpful
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Cedarview
3.0 out of 5 stars Worth a read
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2017
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To call this a novel is a bit of a misnomer. Ballard himself recommends that first time readers just flip the book open to a random page and start reading when they find something interesting, and that is pretty much what it reads like; a collection of bizarre descriptive passages written in a detached, clinical manner. The author is not in the least bit reluctant to examine, re-examine, and re-re-examine his pet obsessions of sexualized car crashes, sexualized highway overpasses, sexualized celebrities, etc. Interestingly enough, with all of this sexual underpinning, "Atrocity Exhibition" is neither erotic nor titillating, and the label of "pornography" is far from accurate unless descriptions of clinical intercourse and disconnected / abstract breasts and other body parts on billboards are what gets you off. Taking into account when this book was written (the modern footnotes by the author are fantastic and my favorite part of the book), Ballard does indeed anticipate and predict the corrosive effects of our current circa 2017 popular culture, especially when it comes to the confluence of sex, celebrity and violence... sort of. The reader really does need to bring their own experience and insight to this party to flesh out the rather sparse and tenuous "plot" such as it is. As others have noted it is very tedious if not impossible to determine which character is which as apparently the same characters are referred to by multiple names and their motivations, if they have any, are abstract and in some cases make no sense whatsoever except to themselves (and, I assume, Ballard, although maybe not). Of the books I have read over the years, only "Naked Lunch" bears resemblance to "Atrocity Exhibition". Personally, I find Burroughs's book to be rather more well written and with longer passages as well which stand on their own as "mini novels". Furthermore, from a sexually transgressive standpoint, "Naked Lunch" buries "Atrocity Exhibition". Perhaps even when freeing his mind onto the printed page Ballard was still under the sway of that powerful English Restraint while the proud American degenerate Burroughs was plumbing deeper processes of degradation. "Atrocity Exhibition" is definitely worth a read and it likely deserves re-reading, but if I were to be asked if I enjoyed it or even worse if I were to be asked to explain it? Well, the three stars pretty much sums it up; "It's Okay".
14 people found this helpful
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Marika C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2020
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Love that it all gets delivered to me!!!
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

R P.
4.0 out of 5 stars Packaging problem
Reviewed in India on July 31, 2020
Verified Purchase
The book arrived a little out of shape. The complaint is just against the packaging. Otherwise, my boyfriend was really happy.
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David
5.0 out of 5 stars Consciousness
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 20, 2020
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I wanted to read this book to see how the author created consciousness. I wasn't interested in a narrative or characters. Instead I wanted the words to become images and inspire imagination. If you read the book like this it works. Some of the text feels like a TV on with no one listening, or a radio stations that spilling dull conversation. Repetition instills meaning over and over again. The reviews on here mention pornography, sex, medical procedures, car crashes, cars. But this books is ideas, thoughts and juxtapositions. A good example of methodologies any aspiring writer should read. Not everything in this world , or more importantly, consciousness should or has to make sense.
9 people found this helpful
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crowbar75.
1.0 out of 5 stars Reader is exhibition piece.
Reviewed in France on January 14, 2017
Verified Purchase
Incomprehensible and timeless. As sure to boggle and confuse readers years from now as it does so resoundingly the day it was first released. Vague, disturbing and humourously pedestrian. Clever and precisely engineered to stir subconsiously the eyes that first contemplate its Dali designed jacket then withdraw passages, sordid psychic mental imagery from within its pages. A study incomplete, invasive, and obtruse as intended by its author!
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Trevor J. Spencer
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves its classic status.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2016
Verified Purchase
This is an unsettling book. Not a comfortable read. Having said that you can see humanity is still on the same path that Ballard describes. The obsession with celebrity, porn and violence continues.
The annotation helps as some of the characters referred to in the book have faded from history.
4 people found this helpful
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SGL
4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth reading.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2003
Verified Purchase
Quite a surreal book. Not sure I understood it completely but here goes...
The sexual pathology of the main protagonist is revealed in a series of psychosexual experiments involving the positioning of objects in the geometry of space time. These are attempts to unlock the latent sexuality of, among others, a motorway overpass, a particular arrangement of wrecked cars, or the angle between walls, along with the re-enactment of the (real or imaginary) deaths of the famous in an effort to achieve a sexual ideal; often personified by Elizabeth Taylor.
In each chapter the main character's identity is viewed from another angle, another facet of his personality, and we accompany him through his apparent psychoses. Even his character name changes throughout and sometimes the events and characters appear only in his mind. Other characters, such as Dr Nathan who is our window of rationality in this surreal world, or Karen Novotny the eternal victim, provide their necessary roles in the psychodrama.
I enjoyed reading this book and, having only read one other J.G. Ballard (The Crystal World), will no doubt read another of his work. However, I felt that The Atrocity Exhibition, good though it was, (ironically) didn't really reach the climax I expected. Maybe I just need to read it over again.
The annotation in this edition by J.G. Ballard is essential - although my copy does not have the illustrations mentioned above.
SGL
26 people found this helpful
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