The Inner Man

Some literary visionary would eventually have emerged in the mid-1960s to alert us to the contemporary applications of Surrealism, the mysticism of technology, the sexuality of science, but for John Baxter it was our great good fortune that the vehicle of that revelation was as unique, gifted and compassionate individual as James Graham Ballard.Baxter's admiration for "Jim" first surfaced when their names were appearing on the same covers for magazines such as NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE FANTASY, where Jim's VERMILLION SANDS stories were first published. Since then, Baxter witnessed him move away into American paperbacks with THE DROWNED WORLD, how a visit to a 1970 art exhibition of crashed cars and fascination with auto sex-death inspired his breakthrough novel, CRASH, and the way ten years later a novel based on his childhood imprisonment by Japanese guards and a Spielberg film adaptation propelled him, blinking, slightly owlishly, on to the international stage.In the 1990s, Baxter asked if he could write Jim's biography. He declined, for the reason that there was too much about Shanghai and his parents that he could not yet deal with in print. This was the first sign of the extent of what was still to be revealed from that period after EMPIRE OF THE SUN. His own memoir, MIRACLES OF LIFE, included many facts but also a great sense of regret. For a man so deeply marked by the past, he was the last to dwell on it, and had he lived there may well have been more to tell - a question mark John Baxter delves into with his excellently written and insightful biography of this remarkable, likeable and much-missed writer.