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Post by dem bones on Jan 27, 2015 23:55:40 GMT
"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months." J. G. Ballard - High-Rise (Fourth Estate, 2011; originally Jonathan Cape, 1975) Blurb: `Ingenious ... High-Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind' - Martin Amis.
Within the walls of an elegant. forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hellbent on' an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once luxurious amenities become an arena for technological mayhem.
In this visionary tale from the best-selling author of Crash, Empire of the Sun, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes, society slips into a violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle."Each day the towers of central London seemed slightly more distant, the landscape of an abandoned planet receding slowly from his mind. By contrast with the calm and unencumbered geometry of the concert hall and television studios below him, the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis." The London High-Rise in question is one of five, forty-storey blocks, each comprised of a thousand apartments, competitively overpriced to deter lowlife. Some high income professionals are, of course, more high income than others, and the upper floors are the domain of business tycoons, media moguls, and celebs, who patronise the occupants of the middle-floors - typically doctors and lawyers - and despise the lower denizens (pilots, air-hostesses, a successful TV producer) as jumped-up pauper scum. The petty animosities between social types quickly spiral out of all proportion and control. We view the early skirmishes through the eyes of Dr. Laing, a gregarious chap with an eye for the ladies who lives alone on the twenty-fifth floor. The first major incident is the deliberate drowning of an Afghan hound belonging to an actress. Within days, a young masseuse (lower floors) has been set upon by a Central London equivalent of the Hollywood wives (upper tier) and a jeweller murdered by persons unknown. As tempers flare, the cheapskate luxury amenities pack up. The air-conditioning only functions for five minutes every hour. The lifts are vandalised to prevent access between the rival floors. Vigilantes roam the corridors. The tenth floor junior school is trashed and its neighbouring liquor store commandeered by the party-loving super-rich. Richard Wilder, a former professional rugby player turned TV producer, is floor two's official hard-case. He plans to film a documentary about the block so the escalating conflict suits him down to the ground. He's already done more than his bit to stoke the fires before leaving the wife and kids to embark on his personal mission; an expedition through hostile territory all the way to the top of the building. Overseeing it all from his penthouse suite, Anthony Royal, who both designed and financed the complex, and recently suffered a skull injury in a car accident. Like Wilder, he doesn't seem the least perturbed by the aura of violence now pervading the building .... To be continued |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 28, 2015 9:05:59 GMT
"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months." J. G. Ballard - High-Rise (Fourth Estate, 2011; originally Jonathan Cape, 1975) Blurb: `Ingenious ... High-Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind' - Martin Amis.
Within the walls of an elegant. forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hellbent on' an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once luxurious amenities become an arena for technological mayhem.
In this visionary tale from the best-selling author of Crash, Empire of the Sun, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes, society slips into a violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle."Each day the towers of central London seemed slightly more distant, the landscape of an abandoned planet receding slowly from his mind. By contrast with the calm and unencumbered geometry of the concert hall and television studios below him, the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis." The London High-Rise in question is one of five, forty-storey blocks, each comprised of a thousand apartments, competitively overpriced to deter lowlife. Some high income professionals are, of course, more high income than others, and the upper floors are the domain of business tycoons, media moguls, and celebs, who patronise the occupants of the middle-floors - typically doctors and lawyers - and despise the lower denizens (pilots, air-hostesses, a successful TV producer) as jumped-up pauper scum. The petty animosities between social types quickly spiral out of all proportion and control. We view the early skirmishes through the eyes of Dr. Laing, a gregarious chap with an eye for the ladies who lives alone on the twenty-fifth floor. The first major incident is the deliberate drowning of an Afghan hound belonging to an actress. Within days, a young masseuse (lower floors) has been set upon by a Central London equivalent of the Hollywood wives (upper tier) and a jeweller murdered by persons unknown. As tempers flare, the cheapskate luxury amenities pack up. The air-conditioning only functions for five minutes every hour. The lifts are vandalised to prevent access between the rival floors. Vigilantes roam the corridors. The tenth floor junior school is trashed and its neighbouring liquor store commandeered by the party-loving super-rich. Richard Wilder, a former professional rugby player turned TV producer, is floor two's official hard-case. He plans to film a documentary about the block so the escalating conflict suits him down to the ground. He's already done more than his bit to stoke the fires before leaving the wife and kids to embark on his personal mission; an expedition through hostile territory all the way to the top of the building. Overseeing it all from his penthouse suite, Anthony Royal, who both designed and financed the complex, and recently suffered a skull injury in a car accident. Like Wilder, he doesn't seem the least perturbed by the aura of violence now pervading the building .... To be continuedLoved the way Ballard made Concrete Island and High Rise seem probable. I think his magnum opus was Empire of the Sun, not Crash, but his best work died after the major success of Empire of the Sun. My favourite has to be the short story collections and particularly Crystal World. His heavy prose seems dated now, something I thought I'd never say when I first read him avidly. I believe our very own Johnny Mains had a two word conversation with him which is the stuff of legend. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 28, 2015 9:19:29 GMT
I believe our very own Johnny Mains had a two word conversation with him which is the stuff of legend. Do you by any chance recall what the two words were? |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 28, 2015 10:01:30 GMT
I believe our very own Johnny Mains had a two word conversation with him which is the stuff of legend. Do you by any chance recall what the two words were? Yes, total recall but I am ashamed to say. I'm hoping Johnny will tell us the story |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2015 18:27:47 GMT
I had arranged, through a contact, to interview Ballard about his short stories with emphasis on 'Manhole 69' as it was in one of my favourite anthologies, Crispin's Best Tales of Terror - the first place I ever read Aickman and an adult Dahl short story. He 100% agreed to do it - the day arrived and I nervously picked up the phone and dialled. He answered, I explained who I was, he shouted F*CK OFF down the line and then hung up.
Later discovered that the phone call was placed around the same week of his cancer diagnosis, so that kind of explained things.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 29, 2015 14:56:20 GMT
I had arranged, through a contact, to interview Ballard about his short stories with emphasis on 'Manhole 69' as it was in one of my favourite anthologies, Crispin's Best Tales of Terror - the first place I ever read Aickman and an adult Dahl short story. He 100% agreed to do it - the day arrived and I nervously picked up the phone and dialled. He answered, I explained who I was, he shouted F*CK OFF down the line and then hung up. Later discovered that the phone call was placed around the same week of his cancer diagnosis, so that kind of explained things. Sad about the cancer. Even having Ballard telling you to fuck off is a major coup though. One of the few SF, or indeed authors of any description, to have a word coined: 'Ballardism'. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 29, 2015 16:38:55 GMT
A sobering story.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 29, 2015 18:13:34 GMT
I began reading Ballard a year or so ago when I got one of these complete chronological short stories collections. I kind of avoided his work. These legends of fiction can be so overwhelming and their works has often aged so badly.
But Ballard surprised me. If you compare his work to other of his time he has such a consistent quality. I instantly loved the Vermillion Sands stories, which I gather a lot of people think are just junk. But the sheer inventfulness is astonishing. And his characters appear to be adults in contrast to a lot of cardboard characters in other sf of the time. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 29, 2015 23:17:05 GMT
I realise my posts may have seemed a bit flippant. For a long time Ballard was one of my favourite authors, a stylistic genius with a brilliant mind. He came out with the classic quote when Man landed on the moon with the words 'We come in peace for all mankind'. Ballard said to Clarke I think - 'If I was a Martian I'd start running now.' A great man who lived an incredible life.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 30, 2015 21:05:46 GMT
A great man who lived an incredible life. There's a recent biography of him by Australian critic and book collector, John Baxter, though it got panned by the critics - not enough research and too much uncritical reminiscence apparently. Still, it's been remaindered here and I'll have to pick it up some time. |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 3, 2015 16:03:05 GMT
His heavy prose seems dated now, something I thought I'd never say when I first read him avidly. Can't say I'd describe his prose as "heavy," certainly not in the case of High-Rise where it is very stripped down and easy on the eye, almost like reading Agatha Christie (!). And it looks like he just invented YouTube. "They're all making their own films down there. Every time someone gets beaten up about ten cameras are shooting away."
"They're showing them in the projection theatre," Jane confirmed. "Crammed in there together seeing each other's rushes."
The perspective has again shifted and we're now viewing the mayhem through the eyes of Anthony Royal, who, at the insistence of wife Anne, was on the verge of abandoning the building, only to have a change of heart, the promise of violence and destruction proving too strong. Bloodied and weird, he prowls the upper floors with his pet Alsation, organising the super-rich high-achievers into guerilla warfare versus the relative oiks on the lower floors. Household pet abuse has become de rigueur. As contemporary paperbacks go, this one is atypically attractive, with bonus material worthy of the name (short story The Intensive Care Unit, an interview with the author, etc.) - even the cover imagery strikes me as appropriate. But why am I typing this drivel when I could be reading the final 70 pages? |
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Post by ohthehorror on Feb 3, 2015 16:23:41 GMT
His heavy prose seems dated now, something I thought I'd never say when I first read him avidly. Can't say I'd describe his prose as "heavy," certainly not in the case of High-Rise where it is very stripped down and easy on the eye, almost like reading Agatha Christie (!). And it looks like he just invented YouTube. "They're all making their own films down there. Every time someone gets beaten up about ten cameras are shooting away."
"They're showing them in the projection theatre," Jane confirmed. "Crammed in there together seeing each other's rushes."
The perspective has again shifted and we're now viewing the mayhem through the eyes of Anthony Royal, who, at the insistence of wife Anne, was on the verge of abandoning the building, only to have a change of heart, the promise of violence and destruction proving too strong. Bloodied and weird, he prowls the upper floors with his pet Alsation, organising the super-rich high-achievers into guerilla warfare versus the relative oiks on the lower floors. Household pet abuse has become de rigueur. As contemporary paperbacks go, this one is atypically attractive, with bonus material worthy of the name (short story The Intensive Care Unit, an interview with the author, etc.) - even the cover imagery strikes me as appropriate. But why am I typing this drivel when I could be reading the final 70 pages? Has this kind of thing always been 'a thing'?, or is it that I've just not noticed until now. Sounded quite good up until that point. |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 3, 2015 17:13:30 GMT
Has this kind of thing always been 'a thing'?, or is it that I've just not noticed until now. Sounded quite good up until that point. Well, it's certainly nothing new. Animal abuse is prevalent in the Pan Books of Horror, for example, where its often used purely to disgust, and its not unusual to find instances of animal sacrifice/ torture in black magic and serial-killer novels respectively. For me, the paragraph in High-Rise is neither explicit or gratuitous. A few pages on there's a similarly detached account of a rape which I found far more unsettling. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 3, 2015 17:34:48 GMT
Heavy as in his use of metaphors - often compared to Conrad. Atrocity Exhibition reads a bit like 'Finnegan's Wake'. In saying this I really love his writing. Ages since I read High Rise or Concrete island though
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Post by ohthehorror on Feb 3, 2015 18:11:02 GMT
Has this kind of thing always been 'a thing'?, or is it that I've just not noticed until now. Sounded quite good up until that point. Well, it's certainly nothing new. Animal abuse is prevalent in the Pan Books of Horror, for example, where its often used purely to disgust, and its not unusual to find instances of animal sacrifice/ torture in black magic and serial-killer novels respectively. For me, the paragraph in High-Rise is neither explicit or gratuitous. A few pages on there's a similarly detached account of a rape which I found far more unsettling. I'll have to just toughen up then I think because I added The Pan Book of Horror Stories: Volume 1 to my Amazon wish list recently, and was looking forward to it. |
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