Customer Reviews

High-Rise.

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel "High Rise" contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author: alarming psychological insights, a study of the profoundly disturbing connections between technology and the human condition, and an intriguing plot masterfully executed. Ballard, who wrote the tremendously troubling "Crash," really knows how to dig deep into our troubling times in order to expose our tentative grasp of modernity. Some compare this book to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and there are definite characteristics the two novels share. I would argue, however, that "High Rise" is more eloquent and more relevant than Golding's book. Unfortunately, this Ballard novel is out of print. Try and locate a copy at your local library because the payoff is well worth the effort.

"High Rise" centers around four major characters: Dr. Robert Laing, an instructor at a local medical school, Richard Wilder, a television documentary producer, Anthony Royal, an architect, and the high rise building all three live in with 2,000 other people. Throughout the story, Ballard switches back and forth between these three people, recording their thoughts and actions as they live their lives in the new high-rise apartment building. Ballard made sure to pick three separate people living on different floors of the forty floor building: Laing lives on the twenty fifth floor, Wilder lives on the second floor, and Royal lives in a penthouse on the fortieth floor (befitting his status as the designer of the building). Where you live in this structure will soon take on an importance beyond life itself.

At the beginning of the story, most of the people living in the building get along quite well. There are the usual nitpicky problems one would expect when 2,000 people are jammed together, but overall people move freely from the top to the bottom floors. A person living on the bottom floors can easily go to the observation deck on the top of the building to enjoy the view, or shop at the two banks of stores on the tenth and thirty-fifth floors. Children swim and play in the pools and playgrounds throughout the high rise without any interference. Despite the fact that well to do people live in the building, with celebrities and executives on the top floors, middle-class people on the middle floors, and airline pilots and the like on the bottom ten floors, everyone gets along reasonably well-at first.

Then things change. The gossip level increases among the residents, and parties held on different floors start to exclude people from other areas. In quick succession, objects start to land on balconies, dropped by residents on higher levels. Equipment failures, such as electrical outages, lead to mild assaults between residents. Cars parked close to the building are vandalized, and a jeweler living on the fortieth floor does a swan dive out of the window. Every incident leads to further acts of violence and increasing chaos in the lives of those in the building. People begin to take a greater interest in what's going on where they live than in outside activities and jobs. As the violence escalates, elevators and lobbies on each floor turn into armed camps as the residents attempt to block any encroachments on their territory. What starts out as a book about living in a technological marvel quickly morphs into a study of how technology can cause human beings to regress back into primitivism. Moreover, Ballard tries to draw a correlation between the technology of the building and this descent into a Stone Age mentality. He shows in detail how the residents of the apartments sink back into the morass, passing through a classical Marxist structure of bourgeoisie-proletariat, moving on to a clan/tribal system, to a system of stark individuality. In short, Ballard tries to equate our striving towards individuality through technology with how we started out in our evolution as hunter-gatherers, as individuals seeking individual gains. The promise that technology will liberate the individual is not the highest form of evolution, argues Ballard, but is actually a return to the lowest forms of human expression.

Within a few pages of the story, I thought this might turn out to be very similar to a Bentley Little book. Little, nominally a horror writer but often a social satirist, often takes a situation like this and shows how people collapse under the pressures of modern life. My belief was not born out, however, not because Ballard doesn't take certain situations over the top but because he imbues his work with a significant philosophical subtext that Little would never write about. Bentley Little is all about focusing on the over the top, outrageous incidents of humanity's decline, whereas Ballard is more interested in serving as a preacher on anti-humanistic technology, thundering out a jeremiad concerning where we might go if we do not take the time to think very carefully about the society we wish to create.

"High Rise" is a dark, forbidding tale of woe that is sure to get a reaction from anyone who reads it. There seem to be few out there who can deliver such devastating blows to our love of technology as Ballard does in his works. This author is often referred to as a science fiction writer, but "High Rise" works just as well on a horror level. So does "Crash," when I think about it, although the cold, detached prose of that book is not present in "High Rise." Whatever genre Ballard falls into, this book delivers on every level.

I would advise the young to follow up their college-class readings of LORD OF THE FLIES with this book, about the war of residents in a high-rise, in which the outside world seems to dissapear and all that matters is the world inside, and the struggle (quite literally!) to the top. This is the postmodern, techno-age version of LORD OF THE FLIES, and implies that instead of an island, we have created our own fortresses and islands, in our age of apartment buildings, condos, and antiseptic, sealed-off living spaces. But we can not escape from ourselves, after all.

As unheimlich as it gets, High Rise is a story about people who lose their civilized selves in a violent, primitive orgy to ascend to the top of a culture entirely enclosed in a skyscraper. For some reason, it reminded me of the final scenes of The Wickerman movie, where no one remained to speak out against the uncontrolled barbarism of the community, there in a small village, here in a very elite group of condo dwellers. Of course, it's made clear that people are really violent, selfish brutes inside anyway; and any tear in the fabric of polite society will open us all to our evil selves. Not the most pleasant book to read in light of the year 2000 computer bug, but I found it very powerful reading.

J. G. Ballard's High-Rise (1975) is a fascinating yet relentlessly mono-thematic novel inspired by the effects of overpopulation on society explored in earlier sci-fi masterpieces such as John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1969) and Silverberg's The World Inside (1971) (both of which I prefer to High-Rise).

The appeal lies more in Ballard's literary qualities and stylistic choices rather than the novel's ideas which are dominated (albeit, I'm being overly simplistic) by a virulent strain of "Lord of the Flies syndrome" afflicting adults, instead of children, crammed into an "island-like" building. Wine war paint instead of pig blood... Chowing on Alsatian dog instead of feral pig... etc.

Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within his huge apartment building during the previous three months."

And so begins our protagonist's (antagonist?) relentlessly dark (and relentlessly predictable) apartment wanderings -- a crumbling society plagued (in increasing degrees) by flickering electricity, disturbed naked drunken rampages along dog pee filled elevators, rape, suicide, the self-destruction of the upper class.

Laing is one of two thousand occupants of an ultra-modern apartment building for the wealthy which contains entertainment facilities, grocery stores, an endless supply of alcohol (a liquor store), swimming pools, and schools. A few minor inconveniences (a weak electricity supply, malfunctioning elevators) leads to the escalation of tension between the occupants.

Although all the occupants are wealthy, those that live higher up band together against the lower floors and a "class struggle" breaks out. The ultra-wealthy dart down the stairs and allow their dogs to pee in the hallways and swimming pools of those lower in the building. The less wealthy dart upstairs on daring raids stealing items. The highest floors take on a perceived "Eden-like" quality and our main characters aspire to venture to the higher floors.

Soon society devolves into an orgy of rape, extraordinary violence, primal urges, as all the elevators stop working, people stop attending work, and the food runs out. The occupants lose all their social restraint -- they lust after siblings, their friends' wives, etc. No one alerts the police... No one questions what is happening... The architect watching all from his high floor penthouse with his white alsatian...

Final Thoughts

High-Rise is a beautifully written book. The collapse of society unfolds in a disturbed and occasionally, an achingly beautiful manner. Our characters are objects -- archetypal parts of Ballard's crumbling society -- we feel nothing for them. A haunting spectacle -- the spectacular suicide (and rebirth?) of a modern society held together by a tenuous facade that snaps under the vaguest tension...

This is the first book by Ballard I've read and I'll definitely seek out more. Highly recommended for those not faint of heart!

I'd only add that, like all of Ballard's work, it's also very funny.

Those of you who think this novel is unbelievable or preposterous have never lived in a large apartment complex.

There's nothing Ballard loves more than microcosms ("Rushing To Paradise", "Concrete Island", "Day of Creation") and in this one, he isolates the factors of human society and puts it up against our animal natures. The result is as fascinating as it is ultimately horrible. Very well-written, and strong both as a novel that raises a philosophical question and as a straight-ahead horror novel.

On a side note, I found this book in print, new editions, in a couple of major Canadian bookstore chain in Montreal. Yet it doesn't seem to be in print in the U.S. What's up?

"Hell is other people": this estimation by Jean Paul Sartre might be used to summarise this book, which could alternatively be described as a modern-day "Lord of the Flies". Yet I felt constantly alienated by the lack of psychological insights into any of the characters: I ended up not particularly empathising with any of them, or even clearly differentiating them. Perhaps the author intended precisely this reaction in the reader. The descriptions of the details of characters' behaviours read almost in an academic style, albeit without any typical failings of academic writing: this book is easy to read, and conveys a brilliant claustrophobia through the words. I did like the sexual analyses, though I personally believe that human beings have the definite capabilities to create societies less like that of chimpanzees and more like bonobos'. However, the portrayals of objective observations are accompanied by a frustrating sketchiness of the human characters. The reader is constantly told precisely what characters are doing, but with no deeper reflections as to why. Indeed, this may reflect the focus of the plot, whereby the building itself is more vivid, pervasive and 'alive' than any of the people physically and psychologically trapped inside. However in the end I found reading this book strangely dissatisfying, because I felt that the writing failed to capture or portray any particularly in-depth illuminations of any of the characters.

It didn't give me nightmares, but... Ok! High-Rise is one of Ballard's best, but it's extremely disturbing. It's much more readable than his dark, freakish "Crash," but just as powerful.

One of SF's finest craftsman, Ballard is an expert at revealing insights towards human nature. Thus, after decades, his works are not dated, as much of the genre's works are. Like any decent SF, this was written not about where we are headed, but about where we already are. And this book is about the violent tendencies to human nature, and as long as we stay this way, this book will be important.

Violent, weird, violent again, but powerful.

I've read this book twice now, and I wouldn't say it's my favourite Ballard book so far, which isn't to say it doesn't have its good points. Freakish, creepy and obsessive, the story tracks the disintegration of a newly-built highrise from the pinnacle of modern convenience to a twisted and perverse enclosed world of primitive survival.

I found a lot of repetition in the narrative, which got a little annoying at times. Typical themes found so frequently through Ballard's work are here - internal psychology in relation to external environment, voyeurism and perversion of the affluent, and so on. Some parts even made me feel quite squeamish, and I wouldn't say this would be one for the fainthearted.

Certainly worth the read for Ballard fans and fans of literature in a similar vein, I don't think this would be my first choice to new readers.

I spent years waiting for this novel. And then I finally got it from my wife for my birthday. I have to say that I was quite disappointed.

First, the conflict in the story is presented in such a fashion that it is hard to be anything but detached from it. While I am aware that I am from Generation Why and am divorced from the concept of caring about fictional or real characters and their trials and tribulations, the fact of the matter is that it was remarkably difficult to really care about ANYTHING that happened in this book, including the gang rape of the inhabitants of the tower.

What should have been an interesting study in the strife and malfunction of human relationships, the stranding of a thousand people on a desert island in the middle of a society that they are functionally free to escape to at any time, was underdeveloped and overprocessed. The result was that a wonderful story premise was destroyed. We know why three or four of the characters stayed in the tower. What about the rest? We only know anything about three of the characters in the entire story, and their motivations seem...lacking for the determination to survive and thrive in this environment that they are presented in.

If you want a dystopian epic about what can go wrong in a building like this, go pick up Neal Stephenson's The Big U. It is far more credible and far more entertaining. Much better overall.

The two good things about this: The first paragraph and the last page. The nihilism and the destruction wrought by the people in the first tower makes reading the book tolerable. And the first paragraph is the single most interesting beginning of a story that I have ever read. These two things are why it is getting a star above minimum.

Go read something better. This is overrated.

Harkius