“He had raised three of us single-handedly following my mother’s premature death when we were five, seven and nine. It was the 60s, when single fathers didn’t do that sort of thing. Most of his friends were sceptical. But he did raise us, as father, mother and much more besides.”
At Guardian Books, Bea Balard remembers her father J.G. Ballard who died last April. (Via Maud Newton)
Not only is the late J.G. Ballard swiftly becoming one of my favorite writers, but now the fact that the man audacious enough to write The Unlimited Dream Company and The Atrocity Exhibition, among numerous prophetic masterpieces, was a great father is nearly sending me into hysterics of admiration.
Admittedly it’s hard to not assume that cutting-edge, brave, controversial authors are child-abandoning, woman-beating train wrecks in their personal life so the fact that Ballard proves the opposite should be exemplary for young-ish, amateur writers like myself.
