High-Rise

This book was……strange. REALLY strange. The writing was good, but the story was just weird. The characters morals and personalities decline so quickly that is becomes ridiculous. I assume this has a bigger meaning – class system, etc., but I just didn’t get it. It was so unlikely. Why are they trapped? Why don’t they leave? The go to their jobs every day – but yet no one will move out or leave the building when things get bad. Are there no other stores outside of the high rise for them to get food? It just is so…..silly. And it ends so abruptly it is like the author just ran out of ideas.

It wasn’t for me. I would not recommend it. There weren’t that many reviews for it on Amazon, but it was one of the few books that looked half decent that were written in 1975, so I gave it a try.

Eh.

Laing knew that he was far happier now than ever before, despite all the hazards of his life, the likelihood that he would die any time from hunger or assault. He was satisfied by his self-reliance, his ability to cope with the tasks of survival foraging, keeping his wits about him, guarding his two women from any marauder who might want to use them for similar purposes.

There is so much substance packed into this 207-page book.

The entire story takes place inside a 40-story luxury high-rise that houses about 2,000 people an ostensibly homogenous group of high-income individuals. But as tensions begin to arise between the wealthy dog owners on the top floors and the families on the bottom floors, the residents of the high-rise divide into three groups, driven by power and self-interest. The hostilities gradually increase as they assimilate into their self-imposed hierarchies within the building and devolve into chaos and anarchy.

Ballard cleverly positions the high-rise as both a literal structure and a social structure. But as the characters devolve into a Hobbesian state of nature, the most disturbing thing of all is that they admit to feeling happier. Finally able to exercise their most devious impulses, they slowly reveal more genuine versions of themselves.

Clearly lots of fascinating themes to unpack here and no surprise coming from J.G. Ballard. Like a Lord of the Flies for adults, this was a dark and twisted read.

Dull, repetitive, anti-climactic, and hints at things it doesn’t have the courage to follow through on. If two paragraphs pass wihout mention of garbage it’s a miracle. Sixty pages would be lost if you tossed out the descriptions that repeat themselves. This book is a poor man’s version of Lord of the Flies, with much less interest or care in any of the characters. Read it, then toss it in the fire as fuel for warmth.

High Rise is a horrific novel about a building that begins to have a strange hold over its residents. The high rise is a virtual vertical city, with the higher levels representing higher social class status. The building has its own school, restaurants, pools, grocery store. The only reason for its residents to leave is to go to work. The residents begin to throw louder and wilder parties and begin leaving the building less and less often to go to work. Often if they do go out, they rest at work for a few hours and then return to the high rise, or they may get to their car and then turn right around and go back to the high rise. The parties turn to violence, vandalism, voyeurism, raiding, raping, murder and cannibalism with the ultimate goal being survival of the fittest. The characters become either checked out or fully engrossed in the game they are playing. Although there is some hope they will get caught, no one ever bothers to call the police or seek outside help. The men and women revert to hunter/gatherer roles. The women seem banded together by the end and it appears the women have come out on top, however, no one really is a winner in this book. Reading this novel from 1975 did not feel much like I had jumped back in time with the exception of the polaroid cameras and lack of cell phones/social media. This novel was many things at once: a horror story, a dystopian science fiction story, and most impressively a chilling social commentary. It is a commentary on the psychological effects of modernization and technological advancement. This advancement leads to an increasingly fragmented and socially insular society that yearns for more connectedness even if that connectedness is horrific. The writing was excellent and I look forward to watching the movie.

The setting for J.G. Ballard’s story is a luxury high-rise in 1970s London. Here Ballard portrays morality as conventional. He imagines a world in which all authority and social conventions are stripped away, and the darkest sides of human nature are given free rein.

The occupants of the high-rise gradually devolve from civil professionals to violent marauders. As the buildings’ utilities fail, its occupants come to prefer its squalor and lawlessness to the world of convention outside the high-rise.

Although it’s written in the 1970s, Ballard’s forward-thinking novel anticipates the voyeuristic nature of violence found on the Internet. He even considers the violation of privacy at the hands of “data processing” companies, or what today we would refer to as big tech companies.

It’s a thought-provoking novel. Add it to your list.

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