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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This edition published by Fourth Estate in 2014
A revised, expanded, annotated, illustrated edition was first published in the USA by Re/Search Publications in 1990
Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1990
The original edition was first published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1970, and first published in paperback by Panther Books in 1972
Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1969
Introduction © Hari Kunzru 2014
Interview © Travis Elborough 2006
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007116867
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER ISBN: 9780007322190
Version: 2016-01-20
CONTENTS
Preface by William S Burroughs
5 Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown
8 Tolerances of the Human Face
9 You and Me and the Continuum
10 Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy
11 Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A.
14 Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
15 The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
Mae West’s Reduction Mammoplasty
J. G. Ballard with Travis Elborough
Most of the film stars and political figures who appear in The Atrocity Exhibition are still with us, in memory if not in person – John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. Together they helped to form the culture of celebrity that played such a large role in the 1960s, when I wrote The Atrocity Exhibition.
Other figures, though crucially important to the decades that followed, have begun to sink below the horizon. How many of us remember Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the Kennedy assassination in Dallas? Or Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered Robert Kennedy? At the end of each chapter I have provided a few notes that identify these lesser characters and set out the general background to the book.
Readers who find themselves daunted by the unfamiliar narrative structure of The Atrocity Exhibition – far simpler than it seems at first glance – might try a different approach. Rather than start at the beginning of each chapter, as in a conventional novel, simply turn the pages until a paragraph catches your eye. If the ideas or images seem interesting, scan the nearby paragraphs for anything that resonates in an intriguing way. Fairly
