High-Rise

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.

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. P

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?

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.

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.