Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A - JG Ballard / The Magic of Ju-Ju skull connection - Archie Shepp / Burroughs' cut-ups and concrete poetry

 

Continuing the JG Ballard theme (see last post), here's a Christmas present...from me to me - ha! Well, I swear it was comparatively cheap by at least £100, so I treated myself to this 1972 Grove Press first American edition. OK, it doesn't have the annotations by Ballard included in the Flamingo 2001 paperback but...look at that cover! Plus, it a hardback...it's a lovely size...it's so good-looking! You can over-indulgence in food at Christmas, but never books.

The painted skull by Alan Winston used for Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A. was also used five years earlier for Archie Shepp's album, The Magic Of Ju-Ju. Winston isn't credited in the book. I don't know about the album. I used to have it on vinyl but it went years ago, along with many others I've sold. Once upon a time I listened to a lot of Free Jazz and the title track of the album certainly is 'free'. But gradually I listened to it less until it then got to the stage where I joined the common listener in finding it bloody annoying! I'll dip in now and again, these days, but generally you could say my taste in Jazz has got more 'conservative'. 

When it comes to literature though, I suppose my taste is...'radical' (?), alongside genre fiction. Ballard's novel would certainly be considered radical amongst most people and The Atrocity Exhibition (it's UK title) his most adventurous work regarding structure. 

Ballard was a big fan of William Burroughs, as I'm sure you know. I see a connection between Burroughs' cut-up novels and concrete poetry when it comes to disrupting structures of 'normal' poetry and text generally to shape new images, new ideas and ways of looking at words and letters. A connection can also be made between Eduardo Paolozzi's 'sampled' texts and Burroughs, then to The Independent Group (of which Paolozzi was a member) and their influence on Ballard. That whole 'scene' inspires me greatly, from This Is Tomorrow to Abba Zaba, Moorcock's New Worlds magazine and British art in the 60s. 

Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds: Science Fiction and Art in the Sixties is highly recommended. The best place to buy it is here.

TTFN