Remembering J.G. Ballard and his ‘Empire of the Sun’

  During my school years, one of my favorite novels was “Empire of the Sun” by British author J.G. Ballard.
  I picked it up again after last month’s death of Ballard at age 78 from prostate cancer. I hadn’t read it since high school, several years
after the novel was released in 1984. “Empire of the Sun” is an autobiographical novel describing Ballard’s experiences living as a
young Brit in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai, China, during World War II.
  For me, it was an evocative, coming-of-age story about a boy named Jim Graham who has to deal with a ton of adversity, including
being separated from his parents, for the duration of the war. I liked how the lad uses his wits to survive around Shanghai and the
prison camp, even though he has a hard time trusting adults. As he grows up, he manages to thrive by befriending some adults
and learning to fend for himself. He has a great deal of admiration for the Japanese war machine, especially the nation’s pilots and planes.
  But his admiration wanes as the Americans, with their powerful B-52s and P-51s, creep closer and rescue seems imminent. Rescue does come but at a scary and violent cost.
  One of the best aspects of “Empire of the Sun” is Ballard’s prolific yet horrifying descriptions of the chaotic life around the camp and the Shanghai area. I love the beginning of the novel: “Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund.”
  Near the novel’s end, Ballard completes that imagery with a cryptic comment, after drunken American and British soldiers urinate outside a bar on a Shanghai street in front of a bunch of Chinese during the postwar occupation: “One day China would punish the rest of the world and take a frightening revenge.”
  “Empire of the Sun” was turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 1987, starring a young Christian Bale and John Malkovich. It was filmed in communist China, which at the time time was a ground-breaking event for a major Hollywood studio. It was nominated for several Oscars, but it never captured the American public's imagination. After watching it on TV a few years later, it became one of my favorite movies. It has a great cast (can anyone spot Ben Stiller?), spectacular cinematography, a gritty realism (prelude to
“Saving Private Ryan”?) and a rousing score by John Williams. Best of all, the screenplay was written by prominent playwright Tom
Stoppard. What can go wrong with a Spielberg/Stoppard collaboration?
  I never read Ballard’s other writings. I’m not that big into science-fiction, which Ballard is best known for. Maybe I’ll take on
“Crash,” Ballard’s 1973 novel about automobiles and violence, which was turned into an award-winning film by David Cronenberg in 1996.
  For me, Ballard always will represent that young boy who was forced to grow up quickly in a warring adult world.