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- Jan 22, 2008
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Two thousand middle-class professionals live in a custom-made block of luxury apartments. Despite their privileged circumstances – or perhaps because of them – psychosis sets in. Minor incidents over power failures and elevator use become violent. Parties turn into orgies and riots. Soon nobody leaves the building by a kind of unspoken mutual agreement, and the inhabitants regress, first into gangs and tribalism, and finally into complete savagery.
For a lot of his late career, J.G. Ballard seemed to write the same book over and over again: the same basic arguments come up in Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes, Millenium People and arguably Running Wild without a lot of variation. However, this is perhaps his best attempt to make that point. The high rise is the opposite of Gormenghast Castle: where the castle’s ancient stone forces people into ritual and conformity, the high-rise’s modern architecture and individual-centred living allows them to go berserk. The novel deals with three characters, representing the (comparative) working, middle and upper classes of the high-rise, and their dreams of gaining, acquiescing to and retaining power. (Interestingly, they are all men. Ballard hints at a different – and perhaps even worse – form of tribalism emerging among the women residents).
Perhaps I am getting soft, but High-Rise is pretty grim at points, as much as anything I’ve seen Stephen King or George R R Martin come up with. Perhaps this is because its horrors are exaggerations of things we all know, rather than full-scale disembowelments. There are no vampires and branding irons here, just vicious beatings and broken toilets. Or perhaps it is the calm, steely way in which Ballard charts the degradation of the high rise: Ballard’s cold prose and the lack of an obvious hero give the impression of an experiment being described as much as a story being told. It’s occasionally grimly amusing, especially in the way that some of the inhabitants cling to petty remnants of their middle-class lives whilst trying to slaughter their neighbours (one eats a dog later on, but remembers to season it first). Ballard was writing this in 1975, but it still feels “right”, even without the iphones and Nigella cookbooks: imagine beating someone to death with a bottle of balsamic vinegar and then devouring them with blueberries and Prosecco, and you have the right idea.
High-Rise is not a work of realistic fiction. Not only do respectable middle-class professionals murder one another at the drop of a hat without police intervention, but they can even afford to buy flats in London. It reminds me of The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, where an ultra-modern haunted house reflects the fears of its inhabitants, and The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (it may also have partly inspired the computer game Bioshock and Games Workshop’s wargame Necromunda). However, there is nothing overtly supernatural or futuristic in High-Rise. For all its violence and obvious impossibility, it works according to its own strange rules. Perhaps it’s best seen as a kind of surreal semi-satire: not exactly a warning, but a realistic concept taken to its logical, crazy extreme.
Would I recommend it? Definitely, if you've got a strong stomach and aren't expecting a very happy ending. "Going up in the world" will never be the same again.
For a lot of his late career, J.G. Ballard seemed to write the same book over and over again: the same basic arguments come up in Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes, Millenium People and arguably Running Wild without a lot of variation. However, this is perhaps his best attempt to make that point. The high rise is the opposite of Gormenghast Castle: where the castle’s ancient stone forces people into ritual and conformity, the high-rise’s modern architecture and individual-centred living allows them to go berserk. The novel deals with three characters, representing the (comparative) working, middle and upper classes of the high-rise, and their dreams of gaining, acquiescing to and retaining power. (Interestingly, they are all men. Ballard hints at a different – and perhaps even worse – form of tribalism emerging among the women residents).
Perhaps I am getting soft, but High-Rise is pretty grim at points, as much as anything I’ve seen Stephen King or George R R Martin come up with. Perhaps this is because its horrors are exaggerations of things we all know, rather than full-scale disembowelments. There are no vampires and branding irons here, just vicious beatings and broken toilets. Or perhaps it is the calm, steely way in which Ballard charts the degradation of the high rise: Ballard’s cold prose and the lack of an obvious hero give the impression of an experiment being described as much as a story being told. It’s occasionally grimly amusing, especially in the way that some of the inhabitants cling to petty remnants of their middle-class lives whilst trying to slaughter their neighbours (one eats a dog later on, but remembers to season it first). Ballard was writing this in 1975, but it still feels “right”, even without the iphones and Nigella cookbooks: imagine beating someone to death with a bottle of balsamic vinegar and then devouring them with blueberries and Prosecco, and you have the right idea.
High-Rise is not a work of realistic fiction. Not only do respectable middle-class professionals murder one another at the drop of a hat without police intervention, but they can even afford to buy flats in London. It reminds me of The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, where an ultra-modern haunted house reflects the fears of its inhabitants, and The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (it may also have partly inspired the computer game Bioshock and Games Workshop’s wargame Necromunda). However, there is nothing overtly supernatural or futuristic in High-Rise. For all its violence and obvious impossibility, it works according to its own strange rules. Perhaps it’s best seen as a kind of surreal semi-satire: not exactly a warning, but a realistic concept taken to its logical, crazy extreme.
Would I recommend it? Definitely, if you've got a strong stomach and aren't expecting a very happy ending. "Going up in the world" will never be the same again.
