Cocaine Nights

If there's anything crazier than coffee, it's cocaine, and this novel revels in the cultural effects of the hyperstimulant. Hyperstimulation is my middle name, man, and this book'll hit your frontal lobes like a weekend in Vegas with all the pretty lights. The main character goes on a journey from a wild coastal town in Spain to a massive social experiment carried out by a guy who makes Jim Jones (of the Kool-Aid party) seem like just another evangelist. Ballard crosses every frontier, from the boundries of civilization to the borderline of the sane. If you like your books hot and twisted, read Rabid: A Novel by Kenyon, Tree of Smoke: A Novel by Johnson, The Pugilist at Rest: Stories by Jones, and Fight Club: A Novel by Palahniuk. The Bookeater!

_Cocaine Nights_ is what you get when a writer of the caliber of J.G. Ballard develops what could have been just another novel of murder and suspense into an "immorality tale" of hero worship that goes terribly wrong.Bobby Crawford is a handsome and talented tennis instructor who wants to transform the sleepy retirement village of Residencia Costasol, situated on the coast of Spain, into an artistic, theatrically oriented, and civic minded community as a front for a den of drug dealers, pornographers, prostitution, and thieves. Crawford previously did the same for the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, home of Club Nautica, managed by Frank Prentice, a Brit recently jailed after he confessed to setting ablaze the home of the elderly and wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Hollinger that snuffed out their lives and those of three other people. Charles Prentice, a travel writer and Frank's older brother, believes in Frank's innocence, despite the latter's repeated protestations to the contrary. Charles goes to Estrella de Mar to investigate the matter.Charles is slowly sucked into the charming and cunning Bobby Crawford's web of corruption, as are many others in the book. They believe that Crawford is basically a do-gooder, in spite of his penchant for petty and not so petty crimes, to which the police repeatedly turn a blind eye.I was caught in the grip of this unbelievably suspenseful tale of a later day Sodom and Gomorrah that just never lets up. I could not help comparing the character of Bobby Crawford with that of the late Jim Jones of the Jonestown Massacre infamy. Jim Jones was a handsome, charismatic man of many talents who led his naive followers into the promised land of Guyana. Like Bobby Crawford, a cult of personality formed around Jim Jones, and like Bobby Crawford, Jim Jones was a psychopath. Each man believed he was the Messiah, but it was Jim Jones, if not necessarily Bobby Crawford, who eventually proved to be the Angel of Death.Let me just say that the climax of _Cocaine Nights_, despite my Bobby Crawford/Jim Jones analogy, is quite unexpected. I do promise that the irony of it will leave your mouth gaping.

Well if you understood fight club, this is a book written before and based on the same ideals. Loving other humans, bringing people together, giving up as a liberation, lack of property as the way to ascend and more. This book is about waking people up, about putting a meaning to everything. It is an utterly symbolic book so most of the narrow minded and people without fantasy will never be able to read it. It is also a humorous book, sarcastic as hell, full of ideas alternatives and above all sooooooo entertaining.

And this is a brilliant novel of what lies under the thin veneer of civilisation that we all wear, an edgy exploration of the the violence that lies within us all. His usual sparkling, deceptively simple prose is here, together with a thrilling murder story, off-beat characters and a threatening air of menace lurking by the pools and apartments of the up-market retirement village. Ballard is tragically under-read, and I urge you to read Cocaine Nights, one of the best books of the 90s, and then move on to his other novels, particularly The Drought and High Rise, and then devour his short stories, which are nearly all perfectly crafted gems.

i have always been intrigued with the themes and topics ballards works have been dealing with. nevertheless, most of his novels could not satisfy me completely. COCAINE NIGHTS changed that. ballards' amazingly beautiful and poetic descriptive way of writing, a story about tomorrow's society set in our present, the dark side that lurks in each one of us. all of the above come together in this novel, and make COCAINE NIGHTS wahat i would consider ballards flagship work. reminiscent of FIGHT CLUB. great stuff.