Review of Hello, America by J.G. Ballard

From a certain angle, J.G. Ballard can be said to formulaic. He loved to take a handful of characters, throw them into an unfamiliar situation, and see the psychological reactions. The Crystal World, The Drowned World, The Drought, and others all see this scenario play out, only the settings changed. Hello, America (1981) does the same, but adds a thick layer of commentary on American culture.

Offering the reader a 2114, post-apocalyptic USA as its setting, Hello, America features a group of Europeans returning to what was once America to explore its remains. Consumerism and poor environmental practices leading to the desertification of the country, dunes now cover North America. Empty, the population emigrated back to its ethnicities’ native lands in Europe. The mission of the exploration group is to determine if anything of value has arisen since the ecological disaster. They land in Boston and set about reconnoitering the east coast before heading out on a long, overland journey to the west coast. Surprises popping up, the group fights to survive while the remains of America show how they have evolved—or not.

Ballard’s relationship with American culture is well documented, and in Hello, America he appears to have given himself the goal of representing its virtues and vices from a reflective point, i.e. a US almost entirely unrecognizable from the neon and highways we are familiar with today. From that distant vantage, Ballard accomplishes this. He picks and chooses his elements/symbols, covers the geography (or what remains of it), and gives readers food for thought on the American dream. More a snack than a full-course meal, however, the novel does not delve deep, which could be a criticism or observation. It will be up to the individual reader whether Ballard’s exploration of American culture is replete enough.

From the viewpoint of 2021, Hello, America has aged well in some regards, not well in others. While deeper, darker undercurrents of American culture have revealed themselves the past few years, Ballard nevertheless captures the madman mindset which seems the source—a kind of restless, poorly educated belief in individualism. One place where the novel does show its age, however, is in that symbols like John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and others are almost fully in the rearview. The 21st century has seen the fragmentation of such cultural icons—individual/niche interest now at the forefront, those cultural roadmarks fading as the golden age of American culture slips further into history.

To write about more of the details of Hello, America would be an injustice to the would-be reader. There are a handful of very intriguing concepts that Ballard uses both as plot devices as well as symbols representing the underlying commentary/theme. (The climactic event is a satirical delight.) In short, classic Ballard. The reader can trust that.

In the end, Hello, America offers an interesting commentary of American culture, told in “classic American adventure” fashion that justifies the quotation marks. While there is nothing ultimately profound or massively revealing about the commentary, there remains food for thought in the manner in which a couple key aspects of America continue to rear their ugly and beautiful heads forty years later. If nothing else, it is an interesting read for people interested in American culture, and entertaining for people who are interested in a sharply-edged look at a post-apocalyptic America.