That Middle-class Disco

Despite the unremitting ponciness factor of G2, it does sometimes contain a bit of breathtaking writing that justifies the tree damage. Today’s piece on Modernism by JG Ballard was just spitting with insights and strong lines. To my mind, one acceptable definition of a good sentence is that once you have read it, you can never look at the thing it describes in the same way again. Forever changed is the Tate Modern – described by Ballard as ‘that middle-class disco’.

I read my first Ballard in the school library. It must have been the 1983 edition of New Worlds: An Anthology. As well as introducing me to Ballard it also contained Pamela Zoline’s The Heat Death Of The Universe – the short story with the single most shocking description of a colour I’ve ever read in a piece fiction. How the book escaped the school librarian’s censorship I don’t know, but I’m glad it did. It was one of those books that helped intoxicate me with beauty of language, made me appreciate it as something more than a means of sharing ideas.