J G Ballard sent this postcard of Mae West, a painting by Salvador Dalí, to Angela Carter on 4 December 1991. He was writing to congratulate her on The Holy Family Album and the publication of Wise Children, which would be her last novel. Close friends, Ballard and Carter had a mutual interest in Surrealist art and poetry.
Ballard’s main reason for writing was to praise Carter’s ‘demolition job on Our Saviour’ – the TV documentary, The Holy Family Album, written and narrated by Carter. It aired in December 1991 on Channel 4. The controversial programme deconstructed visual images of Christ using Freudian analysis and irreverent montages of image, music and voiceover.
Ballard serves Carter perhaps the highest compliment one could pay to a devotee of Surrealism: ‘Breton + Ernst would have been proud of you’.
Postcard to Angela Carter, 4 December 1991, by J. G. Ballard © J. G. Ballard. Reproduced by permission of the J. G. Ballard Estate. All rights reserved. You may not use this work for commercial purposes and the copyright holder must be credited.
Roger Luckhurst describes the influence of modern art, especially Surrealism and Pop Art, on J G Ballard and, in turn, Ballard's influence on visual artists.
Legitimacy and illegitimacy, high and low culture, north versus south London, everything in Wise Children has duality at its heart. Greg Buzwell examines Angela Carter’s last novel, the story of Dora and Nora Chance, the Hazard acting dynasty, and a life lived in the public gaze.
Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter's literary executor, describes going through the writer's papers after her death, and shares the postcards that Carter sent her during their friendship, many of which related to her creative interests.
The story revolves around the twin Chance girls, music hall performers and illegitimate daughters of the great ...
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