Series of sixteen letters, fifteen typed, one autograph, variously signed ("J.G. Ballard", "James", "Jim Ballard", "Jim") to Francisco Porrúa ("Mr Porrua", "Francisco", "Paco"), his Spanish-language translator, publisher and friend, a wide-ranging correspondence touching on the English literary scene ("...In England, of course, the social novel still commands the greatest attention, though Burroughs to a certain extent may change this, but in general the climate here is hostile to the more imaginative types of fiction, and in particular to anything associated with symbolism, the French variety especially..."), surrealism ("...apart from Max Ernst... the whole movement is written off as a bad joke... and is pretty well identified with Dali and his worst efforts... If you accept Freud's view that symbols are unconsciously associated with censored images one needs to look no further for an explanation..."), agreeing that the climate is beginning to change ("...Burroughs himself of course has had a galvanic effect on the sluggish nervous system of British letters..."), giving updates and notes on his own work such as The Terminal Beach (Playa Terminale) ("...I would only draw attention perhaps to the sacrificial role of the dead Japanese, a symbol of unbetrayable mankind, like Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin... not in any sense anti-H-Bomb propaganda – far from it, of course... the bomb as a symbol of total possibility, as a force which as completely quantified the universe, both the outer world of reality and the inner world of the psyche, in so far as these have separate identities... what a marvellous title by the way..."), delighted with the Spanish publication of The Drowned World (El Mundo Summergido) and looking forward to reading English translations of Borges and Cortazar, mentioning the publication of Crash ("...surprised everyone by selling out its first edition within three months..."), stories such as The Assassination Weapon ("...I have invented a completely new technique that dispenses altogether with the exhausted conventions of sequential narrative and instead presents a fragmentary and cubist flux of related but quantified events that are more like the lives we actually experience... the Katherine Mansfield short story is at last on the decline... I regard each of these stories as a 'condensed novel'..."), other authors ("...my view of things is much closer to Melville and shares almost nothing in common with Conrad, who it seems to me is often guilty of the pathetic fallacy... Melville on the other hand, stresses the direct equivalence of inner and outer reality... Melville's whale is a clear example..."), sympathising with the difficulties of publishing in Argentina ("...perhaps a volatile political atmosphere and runaway inflation create a panic demand for books and newspapers..."), and an unexpected burst of inspiration ("...some kind of surge forward of the middle-aged imagination...Perhaps it ties in with Freud's notion that a man is only truly free when his father dies – after my own died a few years ago I was waiting hourly for something remarkable to happen..."), throughout speaking fondly of their relationship ("...I feel I have the happiest relationship with Minotauro and yourself and I greatly appreciate the immense amount of care and thought which you have given to my writing..."), 18 pages, dust-staining, spotting and creasing, 4to (255 x 205mm.), Charlton Road, Shepperton, 10 February 1966 to 22 May 1989