I'm reading this book "Empire of the Sun" by J.G. Ballard and it's crazy. Maybe you saw the movie, but I didn't. It's a semi-autobiographical account of this rich British kid who was living in Shanghai when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Immediately, his life of luxury was over and he is starving and thrown into an internment camp. The language and imagery are very vivid and shocking, and it's interesting to get a different view of World War II than the one I'm used to. I guess there was a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, which is intriguing. Well, Jews do love Chinese food, so I guess it makes sense. What's really interesting about J.G. Ballard is that the majority of the rest of his writing (and there's a lot of it) is science fiction. His most famous book in America is "Crash", the source of the David Cronenburg movie of which I am the world's only fan. I actually thought some of my friends might stop speaking to me when this movie came out and I revealed I liked it. I can't help it though, I have a weakness for pervy Spader characters and car crashes scare the crap out of me, so I liked the exploration of that topic. I read "Crash" and it didn't do much for me, and I attempted another J.G. Ballard book on the strength of an essay that Martin Amis wrote about Ballard's writing but I couldn't hack it.
Tomorrow: an interview with Heather of Knock Knock
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