High-Rise
New York: Holt Rinehart WInston, 1977. First American Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. High-Rise was published in 1975 and is the third novel in Ballard's loose Urban Trilogy, following Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974). All three examine what happens when the systems of modern life fail or are stripped away, but High-Rise is the most contained and in some ways the most disturbing of the three, because the building that serves as its setting is not a hostile environment. It is a utopia.
The high-rise is a forty-story luxury apartment block on the north bank of the Thames, newly completed, self-contained, and occupied by roughly two thousand residents drawn almost entirely from the professional classes: doctors, lawyers, television producers, academics, architects. They are, by income and education, nearly identical. The building has been designed to make leaving unnecessary, with a supermarket, bank, swimming pools, a school, and a restaurant all built in. Ballard establishes this very deliberately. The high-rise does not produce the collapse. It enables it.
The novel follows three residents whose positions in the building reflect the class structure within it. Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the tower, lives in the penthouse and regards the building as his private experiment. Robert Laing, a medical lecturer, occupies the middle floors and observes the deterioration around him with a detached, clinical interest that gradually morphs into participation. Richard Wilder, a television producer from the lower floors, becomes increasingly aggressive, driven by a barely articulated desire to climb the building and reach the top. The three perspectives together cover the full vertical range of the tower, from below to above, and each man's trajectory reflects a different relationship to the violence that unfolds.
The collapse begins with small frictions: noise from parties above, garbage thrown from higher balconies, competition for elevator space and parking. The building's services are never quite adequate. Residents discover that their neighbors, though financially identical to themselves, are social rivals rather than allies. What gives the novel its particular quality is Ballard's insistence that the escalation is not accidental or reluctant. The residents adapt to the new conditions with suspicious ease. They stop going to work. They withdraw from the outside world. They organize raiding parties with something approaching enthusiasm. The violence, when it becomes serious, is not resisted by most of those who witness it. It is watched.
Laing, the most fully realized of the three protagonists, is a useful guide to this. He is not a violent man, but he is a passive one, and his passivity transforms steadily into complicity and then into something colder. By the novel's end he is eating a dog he has roasted over a fire made from telephone directories, planning to introduce the two women dependent on him to morphine in increasing doses to maintain their reliance on him, and looking out at an adjacent tower where the lights have just gone out, ready, as Ballard writes, to welcome them to their new world. He is content. The collapse has given him what he could not find in ordinary life.
This is Ballard's central argument, and what separates High-Rise from straightforward dystopian fiction. The building does not impose barbarism on its residents from outside. It accelerates tendencies already present in them, the status anxiety, the need for dominance, the relief of abandoning responsibility, the appeal of a world with simpler and more legible rules. The high-rise, Royal reflects near the end, is not a failed utopia. It is a completed one.
The novel has been frequently compared to Lord of the Flies, and the comparison is not wrong, but Golding's boys are children whose fragile attempt at civilization collapses under pressure they are not equipped to handle. Ballard's residents are educated professionals who choose, with growing awareness of what they are doing, not to resist. That distinction makes High-Rise seem all the more chilling. Near fine in very good+ dust jacket that is lightly rubbed with minor shelf wear. Item #10497
ISBN: 0030206510
High-Rise was published in 1975 and is the third novel in Ballard's loose Urban Trilogy, following Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974). All three examine what happens when the systems of modern life fail or are stripped away, but High-Rise is the most contained and in some ways the most disturbing of the three, because the building that serves as its setting is not a hostile environment. It is a utopia. The high-rise is a forty-story luxury apartment block on the north bank of the Thames, newly completed, self-contained, and occupied by roughly two thousand residents drawn almost entirely from the professional classes: doctors, lawyers, television producers, academics, architects. They are, by income and education, nearly identical. The building has been designed to make leaving unnecessary, with a supermarket, bank, swimming pools, a school, and a restaurant all built in. Ballard establishes this very deliberately. The high-rise does not produce the collapse. It enables it. The novel follows three residents whose positions in the building reflect the class structure within it. Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the tower, lives in the penthouse and regards the building as his private experiment. Robert Laing, a medical lecturer, occupies the middle floors and observes the deterioration around him with a detached, clinical interest that gradually morphs into participation. Richard Wilder, a television producer from the lower floors, becomes increasingly aggressive, driven by a barely articulated desire to climb the building and reach the top. The three perspectives together cover the full vertical range of the tower, from below to above, and each man's trajectory reflects a different relationship to the violence that unfolds. The collapse begins with small frictions: noise from parties above, garbage thrown from higher balconies, competition for elevator space and parking. The building's services are never quite adequate. Residents discover that their neighbors, though financially identical to themselves, are social rivals rather than allies. What gives the novel its particular quality is Ballard's insistence that the escalation is not accidental or reluctant. The residents adapt to the new conditions with suspicious ease. They stop going to work. They withdraw from the outside world. They organize raiding parties with something approaching enthusiasm. The violence, when it becomes serious, is not resisted by most of those who witness it. It is watched. Laing, the most fully realized of the three protagonists, is a useful guide to this. He is not a violent man, but he is a passive one, and his passivity transforms steadily into complicity and then into something colder. By the novel's end he is eating a dog he has roasted over a fire made from telephone directories, planning to introduce the two women dependent on him to morphine in increasing doses to maintain their reliance on him, and looking out at an adjacent tower where the lights have just gone out, ready, as Ballard writes, to welcome them to their new world. He is content. The collapse has given him what he could not find in ordinary life. This is Ballard's central argument, and what separates High-Rise from straightforward dystopian fiction. The building does not impose barbarism on its residents from outside. It accelerates tendencies already present in them, the status anxiety, the need for dominance, the relief of abandoning responsibility, the appeal of a world with simpler and more legible rules. The high-rise, Royal reflects near the end, is not a failed utopia. It is a completed one. The novel has been frequently compared to Lord of the Flies, and the comparison is not wrong, but Golding's boys are children whose fragile attempt at civilization collapses under pressure they are not equipped to handle. Ballard's residents are educated professionals who choose, with growing awareness of what they are doing, not to resist. That distinction makes High-Rise seem all the more chilling. High-Rise by J. G. Ballard is a classic dystopian novel about the breakdown of social order inside a massive-sized, luxury high-rise complex. Basis for the 2015 film of the same name and starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Siena Miller and Elizabeth Moss. This first American edition was preceded by the U.K. edition published by Jonathan Cape.
The high-rise is a forty-story luxury apartment block on the north bank of the Thames, newly completed, self-contained, and occupied by roughly two thousand residents drawn almost entirely from the professional classes: doctors, lawyers, television producers, academics, architects. They are, by income and education, nearly identical. The building has been designed to make leaving unnecessary, with a supermarket, bank, swimming pools, a school, and a restaurant all built in. Ballard establishes this very deliberately. The high-rise does not produce the collapse. It enables it.
The novel follows three residents whose positions in the building reflect the class structure within it. Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the tower, lives in the penthouse and regards the building as his private experiment. Robert Laing, a medical lecturer, occupies the middle floors and observes the deterioration around him with a detached, clinical interest that gradually morphs into participation. Richard Wilder, a television producer from the lower floors, becomes increasingly aggressive, driven by a barely articulated desire to climb the building and reach the top. The three perspectives together cover the full vertical range of the tower, from below to above, and each man's trajectory reflects a different relationship to the violence that unfolds.
The collapse begins with small frictions: noise from parties above, garbage thrown from higher balconies, competition for elevator space and parking. The building's services are never quite adequate. Residents discover that their neighbors, though financially identical to themselves, are social rivals rather than allies. What gives the novel its particular quality is Ballard's insistence that the escalation is not accidental or reluctant. The residents adapt to the new conditions with suspicious ease. They stop going to work. They withdraw from the outside world. They organize raiding parties with something approaching enthusiasm. The violence, when it becomes serious, is not resisted by most of those who witness it. It is watched.
Laing, the most fully realized of the three protagonists, is a useful guide to this. He is not a violent man, but he is a passive one, and his passivity transforms steadily into complicity and then into something colder. By the novel's end he is eating a dog he has roasted over a fire made from telephone directories, planning to introduce the two women dependent on him to morphine in increasing doses to maintain their reliance on him, and looking out at an adjacent tower where the lights have just gone out, ready, as Ballard writes, to welcome them to their new world. He is content. The collapse has given him what he could not find in ordinary life.
This is Ballard's central argument, and what separates High-Rise from straightforward dystopian fiction. The building does not impose barbarism on its residents from outside. It accelerates tendencies already present in them, the status anxiety, the need for dominance, the relief of abandoning responsibility, the appeal of a world with simpler and more legible rules. The high-rise, Royal reflects near the end, is not a failed utopia. It is a completed one.
The novel has been frequently compared to Lord of the Flies, and the comparison is not wrong, but Golding's boys are children whose fragile attempt at civilization collapses under pressure they are not equipped to handle. Ballard's residents are educated professionals who choose, with growing awareness of what they are doing, not to resist. That distinction makes High-Rise seem all the more chilling. Near fine in very good+ dust jacket that is lightly rubbed with minor shelf wear. Item #10497
ISBN: 0030206510
High-Rise was published in 1975 and is the third novel in Ballard's loose Urban Trilogy, following Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974). All three examine what happens when the systems of modern life fail or are stripped away, but High-Rise is the most contained and in some ways the most disturbing of the three, because the building that serves as its setting is not a hostile environment. It is a utopia. The high-rise is a forty-story luxury apartment block on the north bank of the Thames, newly completed, self-contained, and occupied by roughly two thousand residents drawn almost entirely from the professional classes: doctors, lawyers, television producers, academics, architects. They are, by income and education, nearly identical. The building has been designed to make leaving unnecessary, with a supermarket, bank, swimming pools, a school, and a restaurant all built in. Ballard establishes this very deliberately. The high-rise does not produce the collapse. It enables it. The novel follows three residents whose positions in the building reflect the class structure within it. Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the tower, lives in the penthouse and regards the building as his private experiment. Robert Laing, a medical lecturer, occupies the middle floors and observes the deterioration around him with a detached, clinical interest that gradually morphs into participation. Richard Wilder, a television producer from the lower floors, becomes increasingly aggressive, driven by a barely articulated desire to climb the building and reach the top. The three perspectives together cover the full vertical range of the tower, from below to above, and each man's trajectory reflects a different relationship to the violence that unfolds. The collapse begins with small frictions: noise from parties above, garbage thrown from higher balconies, competition for elevator space and parking. The building's services are never quite adequate. Residents discover that their neighbors, though financially identical to themselves, are social rivals rather than allies. What gives the novel its particular quality is Ballard's insistence that the escalation is not accidental or reluctant. The residents adapt to the new conditions with suspicious ease. They stop going to work. They withdraw from the outside world. They organize raiding parties with something approaching enthusiasm. The violence, when it becomes serious, is not resisted by most of those who witness it. It is watched. Laing, the most fully realized of the three protagonists, is a useful guide to this. He is not a violent man, but he is a passive one, and his passivity transforms steadily into complicity and then into something colder. By the novel's end he is eating a dog he has roasted over a fire made from telephone directories, planning to introduce the two women dependent on him to morphine in increasing doses to maintain their reliance on him, and looking out at an adjacent tower where the lights have just gone out, ready, as Ballard writes, to welcome them to their new world. He is content. The collapse has given him what he could not find in ordinary life. This is Ballard's central argument, and what separates High-Rise from straightforward dystopian fiction. The building does not impose barbarism on its residents from outside. It accelerates tendencies already present in them, the status anxiety, the need for dominance, the relief of abandoning responsibility, the appeal of a world with simpler and more legible rules. The high-rise, Royal reflects near the end, is not a failed utopia. It is a completed one. The novel has been frequently compared to Lord of the Flies, and the comparison is not wrong, but Golding's boys are children whose fragile attempt at civilization collapses under pressure they are not equipped to handle. Ballard's residents are educated professionals who choose, with growing awareness of what they are doing, not to resist. That distinction makes High-Rise seem all the more chilling. High-Rise by J. G. Ballard is a classic dystopian novel about the breakdown of social order inside a massive-sized, luxury high-rise complex. Basis for the 2015 film of the same name and starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Siena Miller and Elizabeth Moss. This first American edition was preceded by the U.K. edition published by Jonathan Cape.
See all items by J. G. Ballard