High Rise (Flamingo Modern Classic)
by J G Ballard
Our Price: $6.95
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: J G BallardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-01-03
ISBN: 0586044566
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Firebird Distributing
Book Reviews of High Rise (Flamingo Modern Classic)
Book Review: There are better out there.
Summary: 2 Stars
This book covers territory which is better-charted than its author and his audience (who seem to agree that he's some sort of pioneer) would suspect; the question of how people behave in the breakdown of social order is not a new one in this of all centuries. Ballard's premise, the isolation of the building and its shift into unexpected but psychologically natural warfare, had me expecting _Watership Down_, and the passage with the gulls suggests that Ballard might have been expecting the same, but that isn't exactly what we got.
This is a fever dream of a rootless humanity with no loyalties, no strong emotions, and no understanding of or desire for either; it rings false. The author does not know what people really act like under these kinds of pressures (though a study of the literature of the two World Wars, fiction as well as memoirs and history, would certainly have told him); but he does know, and laboriously depicts, the set of behaviors that modern literary critics would tell him would occur. It is true enough, as the narrator openly states, that the model for these characters' behaviors is postmodern man, not primitive man; but the defining trait of the postmodern is insulation from difficult physical realities -- hunger, death, pain, war, disease -- and postmodernity tends not to last when this insulation has disappeared.
The author's eye is inaccurate in general; one small but telling detail is the mention of a shotgun halfway through the book, and the comment that the inhabitants of the high-rise had a tacit agreement that they would settle their conflicts "by physical means alone." This sort of understanding (an implausibility which this book shares with _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, in both cases probably due to their authors' aesthetic preference for melee weapons) would last only until someone decided that victory was more important than tacit agreements -- in other words, until someone had been truly and deeply insulted, or found that someone or something that he really valued had been put in danger. Bursts of this sort of real violence happen even in our own more stable society; in a context like this, busily unravelling into a Nietzchean fairyland, they would be all but constant. (Nor does this mention the utter failure of everyone present to involve the police, and indeed the failure of the police, the military, the building inspectors, the insurance companies, and so on to take any interest whatsoever in the high-rise, if nothing else for their own financial self-interest. I'm familiar with what Barzun calls "the loss of nerve characteristic of periods of decadence," but this takes the cake; if Wilder had actually burned down the building as Laing had imagined, think of the life-insurance payouts alone...)
This sort of spurious depiction is probably most painful because much better works have covered this subject, or elements of it. Perhaps the closest analogy to High-Rise is G.K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (now out of copyright, and readily available on-line). Bill Mauldin's _Up Front_ is one of many memoirs of the World Wars -- and the trench warfare of the Italian campaign of 1943-5 saw physical conditions similar to this book's, but with quite different consequences. Post-apocalyptic fiction is a thriving, if often irresponsible, genre; for psychological truths relevant to this book's subject matter, I would recommend Aldous Huxley's _Ape and Essence_ and Walter Miller's _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. And, of course, for a work dealing with the same themes, but with conclusions as different as its physical trappings, I'd recommend Richard Adams' _Watership Down_.
Summary of High Rise (Flamingo Modern Classic)
From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Cocaine Nights comes an acclaimed backlist title -- the unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control -- now reissued in new cover style. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent 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 classic visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.Literary Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literary Books
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Angelsby Marian Keyes
William Morrow; Published: 2002-05-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.14
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.81
Price in other shops:
The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptationby Paulo Coelho
Harper; Published: 2006-07-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Boonville: A Novelby Robert Mailer Anderson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Carameloby Sandra Cisneros
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-10-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $4.60
Price in other shops:
Headhunterby Timothy Findley
PERENNIAL PUBLICATIONS; Paperback; Book
The Crimson Petal And The Whiteby Michel Faber
Harcourt, Inc./Harvest; Published: 2003; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Drowned Worldby J. G. Ballard
Harper Perennial; Published: 2010-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.62
Price in other shops:
Super-Cannes: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2002-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.95
Price in other shops:
Millennium Peopleby J.G. Ballard
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-06-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.15
Cocaine Nightsby J. G. Ballard
Counterpoint; Published: 2010-01-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.54
Price in other shops:
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballardby J. G. Ballard
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2009-09-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $22.02
Price in other shops:
The Crystal Worldby J. G. Ballard
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1988-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.35
Price in other shops:
Atrocity Exhibition (Flamingo Modern Classics)by J G Ballard
Flamingo; Published: 2001-05-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballardby J. G. Ballard
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2010-11-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.94
Price in other shops:
Concrete Island: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2001-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.55
Price in other shops:
Crash: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2001-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.44
Price in other shops: