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February 12, 2006
War Fever
J. G. Ballard's collection of short stories, War Fever, is the only one of the author's books that I've read. In these tales Ballard's shows himself to as a master of extrapolation, in particular with the two stories that close out the book, one a set of 18 footnotes, the other an index for the imaginary autobiography of an imaginary 20th century mover and shaker.
Rereading this one again I remain surprised by the construction, and wonder at the density of the final index-story, feeling like I ought, one of these days, to figure out the story alluded to though the choice of page numbers.
If you write software manuals, you may aspire to the terse but pregnant style of K&R, despairing over ever reproducing it given how much less you understand your material than Kernighan and Ritchie did C. If you write short stories, perhaps you feel the same about some of Ballard's stories.
Posted by Mark at February 12, 2006 04:09 PM
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