J.G. Ballard
Paperback | Pages: 208 pages Rating: 3.61 | 23878 Users | 2196 Reviews
Present Books In Favor Of High-Rise
| Original Title: | High-Rise |
| ISBN: | 0871404028 (ISBN13: 9780871404022) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-87140-402-2/ |
| Characters: | Robert Laing, Charlotte Melville, Richard Wilder, Anthony Royal, Helen Wilder, Anne Royal |
| Setting: | London, England |
Explanation Supposing Books High-Rise
"A low crime-rate doctor," she told him amiably, "is a sure sign of social deprivation."Anthony Royal built the Titanic of skyscrapers.
A state of the art, megalithic structure suitable for 2,000 tenants. It is a self-contained environment with everything a tenant would need such as shopping or exercise or even schools for their kids. The people the building attracts are white collar, well educated, professionals. The apartments sell out quickly and as everyone start to settle into their new lives glitches start to occur. Despite the developing problems entire floor parties are standard weekend entertainment. A bottle drops from a higher floor and shatters on Dr. Robert Laing's balcony and it is equivalent to the first canon fired on Fort Sumter.
As the week continues more bottles are dropped and other assorted trash begins to fall from the sky. A rich jeweler plummets from his upper level apartment onto the roof of a car. Resentment is building between levels. The perceived richest people, where Anthony Royal resides, are on the upper levels. The middle level people, where Dr. Robert Laing reside, are resentful of the upper levels, but also becoming more disdainful of the lower levels. Richard Wilder, a man working on a documentary about human behavior, lives in the lower levels. The trash is accumulating on the ground floor, the trash chutes become jammed and more and more trash is being hoisted over the side of the building creating an intolerable situation for the lower tenants.
Electricity winks out leaving entire floors without power for days at a time. "Five floors were without electricity. At night the dark bands stretched across the face of the high-rise like dead strata in a fading brain."The air condition goes out and when it does come back on it only trickles out for a few minutes before failing again. The lower levels bear the worst of the malfunctions with the upper levels remaining relatively unaffected. Resentments build and as tenants become more and more irritated the civilized structure of the building starts to erode.
This is the point of the novel when J.G. Ballard asks the reader to suspend belief. Yes, he is creepy; and yes, he has a pink beach ball; and yes, he wants to play with your mind.
The three levels of the building go to war with each other. People are beaten. Women are raped. Graffiti is sprayed on the walls. The building breaks down into tribal units with lower levels trying to conquer and take over higher levels of the building. "Not for the fist time Laing reflected that he and his neighbors were eager for trouble as the most effective means of enlarging their sex lives.The problem I have is that the outside world is perfectly normal. Civilization is existing just fine. There is no cataclysmic event that has ruptured the natural order of things. To return to the world of order is as simple as leaving the building. These are highly educated people who have benefited greatly from living in a society that allows them to make money using their brains. I found it hard to believe that these people would so easily transition to a tribal warfare society.
"They discussed the latest ruses for obtaining food and women, for defending the upper floors against marauders, their plans for alliance and betrayal. Now the new order had emerged, in which all life within the high-rise revolved around three obsessions-security, food and sex."
This is the adults gone wild version of Lord of the Flies. I didn't like Lord of the Flies so maybe I just don't like books about mob culture. Ballard didn't sell me on this concept, not that I don't believe that intelligent, well educated people are incapable of marinating in the swamp juices of the lizard brain, but I didn't feel it would happen under the circumstances that Ballard presented. I am still curious to explore more in Ballard's world and I look forward to reading more of his work. I'll leave you with some parting thoughts from Doctor Laing.
"Would he soon be the last person alive in the high-rise? He thought of himself in this enormous building, free to roam its floors and concrete galleries, to climb its silent elevator shafts, to sit by himself in turn on every one of its thousand balconies. This dream, longed for since his arrival at the high-rise, suddenly unnerved him, almost as if, at last alone here, he had heard footsteps in the next room and come face to face with himself."
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Itemize Regarding Books High-Rise
| Title | : | High-Rise |
| Author | : | J.G. Ballard |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 208 pages |
| Published | : | April 16th 2012 by Liveright (first published November 1975) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Science Fiction. Dystopia |
Rating Regarding Books High-Rise
Ratings: 3.61 From 23878 Users | 2196 ReviewsColumn Regarding Books High-Rise
"A low crime-rate doctor," she told him amiably, "is a sure sign of social deprivation."Anthony Royal built the Titanic of skyscrapers. A state of the art, megalithic structure suitable for 2,000 tenants. It is a self-contained environment with everything a tenant would need such as shopping or exercise or even schools for their kids. The people the building attracts are white collar, well educated, professionals. The apartments sell out quickly and as everyone start to settle into their new331. High Rise, J.G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard)High-Rise is a 1975 novel by British writer J. G. Ballard. The story describes the disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos. As with Ballard's previous novels Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), High-Rise explores the ways in which modern social and technological landscapes could alter the human psyche in provocative and hitherto unexplored ways. It was adapted into a film
High-Rise: Lord of the Flies in an urban luxury high-riseOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureMOVIE UPDATE: I finally got around to watching the 2015 film version of High Rise, directly by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Siena Miller, Luke Evans, and Elizabeth Moss. How to assess? Well, it is a valiant attempt to replicate Ballard's bizarre and surrealistic story of social elites battling the lower classes in a fancy new high-rise and willfully descending into barbarism
After reading Concrete Island, I was confident that even if I read everything Ballard ever wrote, nothing could top it. Then I read High-Rise. Like Concrete Island, High-Rise depicts the psychological dangers inherent in modern life. But unlike Concrete Island, it has a large cast of characters. This difference is necessitated by the settings of each novel. The traffic island of Concrete Island is a place that is normally uninhabited, so when Maitland crashes there he becomes its sole occupant ~
WELCOME TO BALLARD APARTMENTS⇨ Luxury Living - To Die For! ⇦Our extra-ordinary apartment complex is a full-service microcosm and so offers all the comforting amenities and thrilling excitements of the modern world - in one lavish locale. Imagine never having to step foot outside again! Whether your interests include swimming, shopping, the education of youngsters, simply lounging about without a care... or even more outré amusements such as rape, murder, incest, cannibalism, and the creating of
"The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation."- JG Ballard, High-Rise I love Ballard. He both attracts and repels me at the same time. No. That isn't quite it. He freaks the hell out of me. His stories and novels are so damn sharp and prescient. 'High-Rise' was written in 1975 (43 years ago!), right after Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), but he seems to GET the psychology of Twitter and Facebook. He gets
High Rise gives us a story that confirms that we are merely living in a pretence civilised world. This pretence can be blown to pieces in an amazingly short time given the right conditions. If we feel that it is no longer necessary to obey to civil manners, it is immediately clear that primal urges are only skin deep.The destruction of the social life of the High Rise apartment complex of 40 floors starts simple enough. A bottle of champagne is dropped deliberately on the nice mosaic floor of
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