J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer
if there is such a thing
Interview in Penthouse (September 1970)
“I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape.”
Narration for Crash! (1971), a short film by Harley Cokeliss
Context: I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape.
We spend a substantial part of our lives in the motor car, and the experience of driving condenses many of the experiences of being a human being in the 1970s, the marriage of the physical aspects of ourselves with the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.
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J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer
Narration for Crash! (1971), a short film by Harley Cokeliss
Context: I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape.
We spend a substantial part of our lives in the motor car, and the experience of driving condenses many of the experiences of being a human being in the 1970s, the marriage of the physical aspects of ourselves with the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.
“Stupidity, greed, misdirected aggression—or sum it up and call it man.”
Lester del Rey (1915–1993) Novelist, short story writer, editor
Source: The Eleventh Commandment (1962), Chapter 12 (p. 114)
Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar
Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 6.
“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.”
Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild
Source: Into the Wild
Manuel Monteiro de Castro (1938) secretary of the Congregation for Bishops
Euthanasia similar to Hitler’s racial purging, says Nuncio in Spain https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/12276/euthanasia-similar-to-hitlers-racial-purging-says-nuncio-in-spain (8 April 2008)
J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer
"Fictions of Every Kind" in Books and Bookmen (February 1971)
