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Super-Cannes
Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, built for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, the residents lack nothing, yet one day, a doctor at the clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and her husband Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain Eden-Olympia's smoothly-running surface.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
J.G. Ballard
440 books3,751 followersJames Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories (or "condensed novels") such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg.
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews
September 2, 2015
A wonderful novel, oozing with millenarian angst and chock-full of Ballard’s favourite icons, played from his deck like tarot cards – the Grounded Pilot, the Closed Community, the Unhinged Doctor, the Sexy Car-Crash – with the theme, as always, having to do with the dark poles of eros and thanatos lurking just beneath the veneer of human society.
The plot involves Paul Sinclair, a former airman recovering from a plane crash, who accompanies his young wife Jane to an ultramodern business park on the French Riviera, where she is to work as an on-site physician. Paul gets drawn into uncovering the mystery surrounding Jane’s predecessor, who went on a killing spree and murdered ten people before being killed himself.
At first the place seems paradisiacal, full of rich happy people like something from the 30s – ‘a vanished world of Cole Porter and beach pyjamas, morphine lesbians and the swagger portraits of Tamara de Lempicka’. But something is very wrong at the Eden-Olympia complex: in each tiny, everyday detail there is an undercurrent of cheap sex, casual violence, sickness. (It is very Lynchian in that sense: god I wish Lynch would film this.) ‘Over the swimming pools and manicured lawns seemed to hover a dream of violence,’ we are told at one point; but often the hints are more subtle and unnerving. Innocuous body parts become creepy and upsetting as Ballard describes them:
My exposed big toes unsettled her, flexing priapically among the unswept leaves.
I love this sentence so much. It makes me laugh at how ridiculous it is, while also making me shudder because it works. There is more lurking menace when Paul and Jane arrive at their new home:
The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water.
—Actually let me just stop there for a second so we can appreciate that admirable sentence. Doing a lot of work, isn’t it! Direct but efficient. Ballard goes on:
Reflections from its disturbed surface seemed to bruise the smooth walls of the house. The light drummed against Jane’s sunglasses, giving her the edgy and vulnerable look of a studio visitor who had strayed into the wrong film set.
The reference to the movie business is an example of Ballard’s tendency to choose his similes and metaphors from the realms of modern technology and celebrity culture. The world of Super-Cannes is not natural but, rather, mediated or scientific, even medical: a flag flutters ‘like the trace of a fibrillating heart’, the sea is ‘smooth enough to xerox’, every hair on a fur stole is ‘as vibrant as an electron track in a cloud chamber’, crowds of tourists clump around the shop-fronts ‘like platelets blocking an artery’.
This is only the third or fourth Ballard novel I’ve read, but I’ve never enjoyed his cold, efficient prose style more than I did here. Some writers explore themes; Ballard dissects them, using a scalpel. Like his main influence, William Burroughs, and his main disciple, Will Self, Ballard sees social problems as a matter of pathology: sexual perversion for him is about psychosexual dysfunction; casual violence is about clinical psychopathy. This medicalisation can make for an eerie worldview, but it gives you some descriptive passages you wouldn’t get from any other writer. And for once, I genuinely cared about the characters here – I was really rooting for Paul and Jane to get out in one piece.
As well as being a mystery story, this is a stonking novel-of-ideas, and the main idea is this: if the modern world is making us all less sociable and more atomised, what might the psychological consequences be? Because the madness and violence at Eden-Olympia are intimately tied to the erosion of community that Ballard sees around him:
People find all the togetherness they need in the airport boarding lounge and the department-store lift. They pay lip service to community values but prefer to be alone.
Or again:
The Adolf Hitlers and Pol Pots of the future won’t walk out of the desert. They’ll emerge from shopping malls and corporate business parks.
I’m not sure I entirely accept Ballard’s thesis, or his speculation that ‘meaningless violence may be the true poetry of the new millennium’; but then I don’t think he does either – it’s thrown out there as a way of working with the issues. Watching him at work, scalpel in hand, is disturbing, thought-provoking, and enormously enjoyable.
May 5, 2024
Very much a companion piece to Cocaine Nights, by taking some of the main themes from that and transferring them from the Costa del Sol to the French Riviera, expanding on them, resulting in a richer, deeper, and generally better novel all round. On the surface we have an intelligent satirical thriller with a whodunnit scenario, but it was the sinister underbelly - the darker revelations - that really got to me the most. The protagonist Paul Sinclair could have been plucked straight out of Cocaine Nights - someone cut off from modern life, standing on the side lines waiting to unravel its core, whilst trying to find the answers to his own alienation. And like Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes has, in the psychiatrist Wilder Penrose, a side character who really steals the show. Penrose's Eden-Olympia is one huge monster - a wealthy hi-tech business park sitting in the hills looking over the French Riviera - home to the workaholics and new elites who have life just the way they want it. Here, being sucked up in the world of work has left any social life down the sink hole, as the executives hidden away in their glass-fronted buildings are only ever seen getting in and out of fancy chauffeur-driven cars. But behind the corporate megalomania, there is trouble in paradise - linked to the killings of Dr. Greenwood who gunned down a handful of people for no apparent reason. Sinclair uncovers a network of crime - a serious programme of violence designed by Penrose to counteract the stress of work - from sex games (it was uncomfortable reading in places once child sex abuse is exposed), attacks on Arab pimps and Senegalese merchants, to robbery, vandalism, and ultimately murder - while his young paediatrician wife Jane (Greenwood's replacement) feels less of a wife, by getting hooked on recreational drugs and starting an affair with a neighbours wife. Sinclair, with the help of Frances Baring, an Eden-Olympia employee and former lover of Greenwood, sets out to expose all the wrongs within this French Silicon Valley. On the one hand Sinclair is appalled by what he comes across, and yet, he somehow finds admiration and justification for the ruthlessness behind the businessmen's therapeutic criminal activity. In the long run, I don't think this will become as memorable as High-Rise - my favourite so far - but still, it was a really engrossing read, very accessible, and right up there with his best fiction. 4.7/5
October 18, 2016
Remake/Remodel/Reboot
"Super-Cannes" seems to be a reboot of Ballard's previous novel, "Cocaine Nights".
When I finished it, I re-read my review of "Cocaine Nights" and was surprised at how much of it could be applied equally to this work, with only minimal adjustment.
"CN" is set in an expatriate community on the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean. "S-C" is set in the Eden-Olympia high-tech business park on the French Cote d'Azur.
In "CN", the narrator, Charles, investigates crimes allegedly committed by his brother, Frank. In "S-C", the narrator, Paul, investigates ten murders (including those of seven senior executives at Eden-Olympia) allegedly committed by a boyishly handsome English doctor (David Greenwood) who has previously had an affair with Paul's girlish bodied physician wife, Jane ("she could have passed for seventeen").
Eventually, Charles takes on Frank's roles and responsibilities in the community. Paul (who is "too dull and normal for Eden-Olympia") finds out enough about the internal operations of the business park to identify with and want to finish the personal crusade started by David.
Yet again, a character becomes a passenger in the life of another, even if they've already died.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Ballard attended the Cannes Film Festival with David Cronenberg in 1996 to launch the film of "Crash". It's evident that Ballard became quite familiar with the layout of Cannes and the surrounding environs.
Like "CN", "S-C" adopts the style of a noirish crime thriller. The writing style is very matter of fact, sentences are both descriptive and economical. Every now and again, one stands out and grabs your attention. We are always looking through a glass darkly. The sinister oozes between the words and through the shattered glass of broken mirrors. Readily acknowledging his debt to Lewis Carroll, Ballard takes us down the rabbit hole and guides us chapter by chapter towards the malevolence that lurks in the world below.
"The Illusion Pays Off"
Paul introduces us to the psychiatrist, Dr Wilder Penrose, in the first paragraph of the novel:
"I realise now that a kind of waiting madness, like a state of undeclared war, haunted the office buildings of the business park. For most of us, Dr Wilder Penrose was our amiable Prospero, the psychopomp who steered our darkest dreams towards the daylight...Only when I learned to admire this flawed and dangerous man was I able to think of killing him."
Eden-Olympia is a community held together by "talent, not wealth or glamour". Penrose explains to Paul:
"Forget about crime. The important thing is that the residents of Eden-Olympia think they're policing themselves...They aren't, but the illusion pays off."
For the psychiatrist, the illusion is just as valid as reality.
"Feeling Deeply Bored"
The newly arrived Paul and Jane live in a large art-deco villa in which David Greenwood formerly resided:
"The ocean-liner windows and porthole skylights seemed to open onto the 1930's, a vanished world of Cole Porter and beach pyjamas, morphine lesbians and the swagger portraits of Tamara de Lempecka."
Detail by Tamara de Lempecka
Eden-Olympia itself is strangely clinical and antiseptic:
"Intimacy and neighbourliness were not features of everyday life at Eden-Olympia. An invisible infrastructure took the place of traditional civic virtues...The top drawer professionals no longer needed to devote a moment's thought to each other, and had dispensed with the checks and balances of community life. There were no town councils or magistrates' courts, no citizens' advice bureaus. Civility and polity were designed into Eden-Olympia...Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force."
"By the afternoon, all this tolerance and good behaviour left me feeling deeply bored."
Freedom from Morality
Paul starts to acquire an understanding of Eden-Olympia:
"All you people do is work. It's wonderful here, but they left out reality...There's no drama and no conflict...Where are the moral compass bearings that hold everything together? Has Eden-Olympia gone beyond morality."
To which Penrose responds:
"We've achieved real freedom, the freedom from morality..."
"The rich know how to cope with the psychopathic. The squirearchy have always enjoyed freedoms denied to the tenant farmers and peasantry. De Sade’s behaviour was typical of his class. Aristocracies keep alive those endangered pleasures that repel the bourgeoisie. They may seem perverse, but they add to the possibilities of life."
"Perverse behaviours were once potentially dangerous. Societies weren't strong enough to allow them to flourish."
"The middle classes have run the world since the French Revolution, but they're now the new proletariat. It's time for another elite to set the agenda."
Sadeian Impulses
Penrose believes that sado-masochistic sex, violence, paedophilia, kiddie porn, drugs and fascist ideas are all conducive to mental health:
"These impulses exist in all of us. They're the combustible fuel the psyche runs on...We're talking about thoughts not deeds. We don't give in to every passing whim or impulse. But it's a mistake to ignore them...If you feel drawn from thought to deed, seize the hour. Pay the price. Be true to your real self, embrace all the possibilities of your life."
Psychopathy is the treatment Penrose prescribes for the inhabitants of Eden-Olympia:
"Eden-Olympia's great defect is that there's no need for personal morality. Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems...But part of the mind atrophies. A moral calculus that took thousands of years to develop starts to wither from neglect. Once you dispense with morality the important decisions become a matter of aesthetics. You've entered an adolescent world where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear."
"The Adolf Hitlers and Pol Pots of the future won't walk out of the desert. They'll emerge from shopping malls and corporate business parks."
"Psychopathy is Freedom, Psychopathy is Fun"
Penrose initiates his patients into therapeutic group violence, which they film on video:
"The run-down chief executives need a small dose of madness, a carefully metered measure of psychopathy. Nothing too criminal or deranged. More like an adventure-training course, or a game of touch rugby."
"Soon we had an active therapy group with a dozen senior executives. At weekends they'd start brawls in Maghrebian bars, trash any Arab cars that looked unroadworthy, rough up a Russian pimp or two."
"Meaningless violence may be the true poetry of the new millennium. Perhaps only gratuitous madness can define who we are...These criminal activities have helped them to rediscover themselves."
"The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realise how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanisation of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague...Sanity and reason are but a vast illusion, built from mirrors that lie..."
"Homo sapiens is a reformed hunter-killer of depraved appetites, which once helped him to survive. The deviant impulses coded into his central nervous system have been switched off. He can no longer harm himself or anyone else. But nature sensibly endowed him with a taste for cruelty and an intense curiosity about pain and death. Without them, he's trapped in the afternoon shopping malls of a limitless mediocrity. We need to revive him, give him back the killing eye and the dreams of death. Together they helped him to dominate this planet."
The group violence allows Penrose to experience violence vicariously, so there is a sense in which his approach is designed for his own benefit.
The Escalator of Possibility - "Part of You Believes His Lunatic Ideology"
Paul is almost tempted by Penrose's rhetoric:
"In his playful way he was egging me on, urging me to board the escalator of possibility that had begun to unroll itself at my feet."
"He can be very persuasive, setting out his Sadeian world, his do-it-yourself psychopathy kit.”
Ballard uses Penrose as an example of what he calls "normalising the psychopathic." It allows him to personalise an ideology he believes has arisen, perhaps spontaneously, perhaps inevitably, in late 20th century capitalism.
Much of Ballard's diagnosis of the psychopathic condition reminded me of the works of Don DeLillo.
Nietzsche Above the Croisette
Penrose is not advocating "an insane free-for-all. A voluntary and sensible psychopathy is the only way we can impose a shared moral order."
"Years of bourgeois conditioning had produced a Europe suffocating in work, commerce and conformity. Its people needed to break out, to invent the hatreds that could liberate them, and they found an Austrian misfit only too happy to do the job...A controlled psychopathy is a way of resocialising people and tribalising them into mutually supportive groups."
"Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world."
"There are times when you feel the wind of history under your wings."
Paul declares himself against Penrose's ideology. In it, he detects the ultimate cause of the social problems plaguing Eden-Olympia.
"Let's Kill All the Psychiatrists"
In the end, Paul believes he has found the motive for David’s murder spree.
"He wanted to kill the people who'd corrupted him."
Perhaps this is an option available when the problem has been personalised. However, it mightn't be available if the problem is inherent in capitalism, the system or society at large. In Ballard's eyes, this is the problem we faced as we entered the 21st century and still confront. All his fiction can do is warn us.
"Super-Cannes" seems to be a reboot of Ballard's previous novel, "Cocaine Nights".
When I finished it, I re-read my review of "Cocaine Nights" and was surprised at how much of it could be applied equally to this work, with only minimal adjustment.
"CN" is set in an expatriate community on the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean. "S-C" is set in the Eden-Olympia high-tech business park on the French Cote d'Azur.
In "CN", the narrator, Charles, investigates crimes allegedly committed by his brother, Frank. In "S-C", the narrator, Paul, investigates ten murders (including those of seven senior executives at Eden-Olympia) allegedly committed by a boyishly handsome English doctor (David Greenwood) who has previously had an affair with Paul's girlish bodied physician wife, Jane ("she could have passed for seventeen").
Eventually, Charles takes on Frank's roles and responsibilities in the community. Paul (who is "too dull and normal for Eden-Olympia") finds out enough about the internal operations of the business park to identify with and want to finish the personal crusade started by David.
Yet again, a character becomes a passenger in the life of another, even if they've already died.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Ballard attended the Cannes Film Festival with David Cronenberg in 1996 to launch the film of "Crash". It's evident that Ballard became quite familiar with the layout of Cannes and the surrounding environs.
Like "CN", "S-C" adopts the style of a noirish crime thriller. The writing style is very matter of fact, sentences are both descriptive and economical. Every now and again, one stands out and grabs your attention. We are always looking through a glass darkly. The sinister oozes between the words and through the shattered glass of broken mirrors. Readily acknowledging his debt to Lewis Carroll, Ballard takes us down the rabbit hole and guides us chapter by chapter towards the malevolence that lurks in the world below.
"The Illusion Pays Off"
Paul introduces us to the psychiatrist, Dr Wilder Penrose, in the first paragraph of the novel:
"I realise now that a kind of waiting madness, like a state of undeclared war, haunted the office buildings of the business park. For most of us, Dr Wilder Penrose was our amiable Prospero, the psychopomp who steered our darkest dreams towards the daylight...Only when I learned to admire this flawed and dangerous man was I able to think of killing him."
Eden-Olympia is a community held together by "talent, not wealth or glamour". Penrose explains to Paul:
"Forget about crime. The important thing is that the residents of Eden-Olympia think they're policing themselves...They aren't, but the illusion pays off."
For the psychiatrist, the illusion is just as valid as reality.
"Feeling Deeply Bored"
The newly arrived Paul and Jane live in a large art-deco villa in which David Greenwood formerly resided:
"The ocean-liner windows and porthole skylights seemed to open onto the 1930's, a vanished world of Cole Porter and beach pyjamas, morphine lesbians and the swagger portraits of Tamara de Lempecka."
Detail by Tamara de Lempecka
Eden-Olympia itself is strangely clinical and antiseptic:
"Intimacy and neighbourliness were not features of everyday life at Eden-Olympia. An invisible infrastructure took the place of traditional civic virtues...The top drawer professionals no longer needed to devote a moment's thought to each other, and had dispensed with the checks and balances of community life. There were no town councils or magistrates' courts, no citizens' advice bureaus. Civility and polity were designed into Eden-Olympia...Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force."
"By the afternoon, all this tolerance and good behaviour left me feeling deeply bored."
Freedom from Morality
Paul starts to acquire an understanding of Eden-Olympia:
"All you people do is work. It's wonderful here, but they left out reality...There's no drama and no conflict...Where are the moral compass bearings that hold everything together? Has Eden-Olympia gone beyond morality."
To which Penrose responds:
"We've achieved real freedom, the freedom from morality..."
"The rich know how to cope with the psychopathic. The squirearchy have always enjoyed freedoms denied to the tenant farmers and peasantry. De Sade’s behaviour was typical of his class. Aristocracies keep alive those endangered pleasures that repel the bourgeoisie. They may seem perverse, but they add to the possibilities of life."
"Perverse behaviours were once potentially dangerous. Societies weren't strong enough to allow them to flourish."
"The middle classes have run the world since the French Revolution, but they're now the new proletariat. It's time for another elite to set the agenda."
Sadeian Impulses
Penrose believes that sado-masochistic sex, violence, paedophilia, kiddie porn, drugs and fascist ideas are all conducive to mental health:
"These impulses exist in all of us. They're the combustible fuel the psyche runs on...We're talking about thoughts not deeds. We don't give in to every passing whim or impulse. But it's a mistake to ignore them...If you feel drawn from thought to deed, seize the hour. Pay the price. Be true to your real self, embrace all the possibilities of your life."
Psychopathy is the treatment Penrose prescribes for the inhabitants of Eden-Olympia:
"Eden-Olympia's great defect is that there's no need for personal morality. Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems...But part of the mind atrophies. A moral calculus that took thousands of years to develop starts to wither from neglect. Once you dispense with morality the important decisions become a matter of aesthetics. You've entered an adolescent world where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear."
"The Adolf Hitlers and Pol Pots of the future won't walk out of the desert. They'll emerge from shopping malls and corporate business parks."
"Psychopathy is Freedom, Psychopathy is Fun"
Penrose initiates his patients into therapeutic group violence, which they film on video:
"The run-down chief executives need a small dose of madness, a carefully metered measure of psychopathy. Nothing too criminal or deranged. More like an adventure-training course, or a game of touch rugby."
"Soon we had an active therapy group with a dozen senior executives. At weekends they'd start brawls in Maghrebian bars, trash any Arab cars that looked unroadworthy, rough up a Russian pimp or two."
"Meaningless violence may be the true poetry of the new millennium. Perhaps only gratuitous madness can define who we are...These criminal activities have helped them to rediscover themselves."
"The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realise how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanisation of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague...Sanity and reason are but a vast illusion, built from mirrors that lie..."
"Homo sapiens is a reformed hunter-killer of depraved appetites, which once helped him to survive. The deviant impulses coded into his central nervous system have been switched off. He can no longer harm himself or anyone else. But nature sensibly endowed him with a taste for cruelty and an intense curiosity about pain and death. Without them, he's trapped in the afternoon shopping malls of a limitless mediocrity. We need to revive him, give him back the killing eye and the dreams of death. Together they helped him to dominate this planet."
The group violence allows Penrose to experience violence vicariously, so there is a sense in which his approach is designed for his own benefit.
The Escalator of Possibility - "Part of You Believes His Lunatic Ideology"
Paul is almost tempted by Penrose's rhetoric:
"In his playful way he was egging me on, urging me to board the escalator of possibility that had begun to unroll itself at my feet."
"He can be very persuasive, setting out his Sadeian world, his do-it-yourself psychopathy kit.”
Ballard uses Penrose as an example of what he calls "normalising the psychopathic." It allows him to personalise an ideology he believes has arisen, perhaps spontaneously, perhaps inevitably, in late 20th century capitalism.
Much of Ballard's diagnosis of the psychopathic condition reminded me of the works of Don DeLillo.
Nietzsche Above the Croisette
Penrose is not advocating "an insane free-for-all. A voluntary and sensible psychopathy is the only way we can impose a shared moral order."
"Years of bourgeois conditioning had produced a Europe suffocating in work, commerce and conformity. Its people needed to break out, to invent the hatreds that could liberate them, and they found an Austrian misfit only too happy to do the job...A controlled psychopathy is a way of resocialising people and tribalising them into mutually supportive groups."
"Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world."
"There are times when you feel the wind of history under your wings."
Paul declares himself against Penrose's ideology. In it, he detects the ultimate cause of the social problems plaguing Eden-Olympia.
"Let's Kill All the Psychiatrists"
In the end, Paul believes he has found the motive for David’s murder spree.
"He wanted to kill the people who'd corrupted him."
Perhaps this is an option available when the problem has been personalised. However, it mightn't be available if the problem is inherent in capitalism, the system or society at large. In Ballard's eyes, this is the problem we faced as we entered the 21st century and still confront. All his fiction can do is warn us.
March 4, 2015
Anyone who's read say, half a dozen Ballard novels could probably identify this as such from the first paragraph. A first paragraph that stayed with me through-out the book. Indeed I re-read it twice, once at about the 1/3 mark and once right after finishing the book.
One is rapidly led to believe that this novel deals with all of Ballard's normal tropes; medical doctor characters, nutters, aviation, social microcosms, veneer of civilisation which is easily ripped away. In the case of one of these, though, one is being mis-led, which makes the book more interesting. Instead of pulling a Lord of the Flies re-set (see High Rise, Concrete Island, Rushing to Paradise) here the characters, despite all working in a giant science park on the French Riviera, do not lose their connections to the outside world completely - at least not physically, making the book more realistic than say, High Rise, where everybody inexplicably chooses to give up work and never leave their middle-class tower apartment block home. Most of the characters still behave like a-moral aliens or depraved loonies, however. This seems to have been one of Ballard's core beliefs; we're all just pretending to be sane until we can get to a situation where we don't have to pretend anymore. I don't really buy it.
There's a murder mystery at the core of the book, which provides a narrative drive sometimes absent with Ballard. Who did what and why seems to be pretty much wrapped up by about half way and then the book meanders for about 100p before further revelations wind things up again for a denouement that is quite satisfying, particularly the very end.
If there's a real antagonist in this book, it's the psychiatrist, Wilder, who's views are disturbing. I immediately reacted against them; this must be wrong! But I had to stop and seriously think things through to see where the error was hidden. A novel hasn't made me do that since Starship Troopers. It's one of those scary philosophies all the more dangerous and superficially plausible because there is just enough truth mixed with the insanity.
Ballard is such a hit-and-miss writer. High Rise was an unmitigated disaster, Rushing to Paradise is a bull's eye, this is somewhere between. More interesting for being a believable setting, more readable for its use and subversion of murder-mystery trappings, clever in the character arc of the protagonist, but suffering still from being too much of a re-tread of Ballard's basic themes, never-the-less worthwhile.
One is rapidly led to believe that this novel deals with all of Ballard's normal tropes; medical doctor characters, nutters, aviation, social microcosms, veneer of civilisation which is easily ripped away. In the case of one of these, though, one is being mis-led, which makes the book more interesting. Instead of pulling a Lord of the Flies re-set (see High Rise, Concrete Island, Rushing to Paradise) here the characters, despite all working in a giant science park on the French Riviera, do not lose their connections to the outside world completely - at least not physically, making the book more realistic than say, High Rise, where everybody inexplicably chooses to give up work and never leave their middle-class tower apartment block home. Most of the characters still behave like a-moral aliens or depraved loonies, however. This seems to have been one of Ballard's core beliefs; we're all just pretending to be sane until we can get to a situation where we don't have to pretend anymore. I don't really buy it.
There's a murder mystery at the core of the book, which provides a narrative drive sometimes absent with Ballard. Who did what and why seems to be pretty much wrapped up by about half way and then the book meanders for about 100p before further revelations wind things up again for a denouement that is quite satisfying, particularly the very end.
If there's a real antagonist in this book, it's the psychiatrist, Wilder, who's views are disturbing. I immediately reacted against them; this must be wrong! But I had to stop and seriously think things through to see where the error was hidden. A novel hasn't made me do that since Starship Troopers. It's one of those scary philosophies all the more dangerous and superficially plausible because there is just enough truth mixed with the insanity.
Ballard is such a hit-and-miss writer. High Rise was an unmitigated disaster, Rushing to Paradise is a bull's eye, this is somewhere between. More interesting for being a believable setting, more readable for its use and subversion of murder-mystery trappings, clever in the character arc of the protagonist, but suffering still from being too much of a re-tread of Ballard's basic themes, never-the-less worthwhile.
January 22, 2021
Eden-Olympia is a multinational hi-tech business park near Cannes in the south of France. It’s a city within itself, and all the workers at these big companies, executives etc live there with its own security , medical staff and facilities, everything for a luxurious life. Paul Sinclair and his doctor wife arrive when she gets a job to replace the previous doctor who went on a shooting rampage killing 10 people.
Sinclair is a grounded pilot after a crash that left his knee damaged. The most sinister person is the first man the couple meet, Wilder Penrose the psychiatrist. He builds up the mystery and strange atmosphere. Sinclair without a job , becomes obsessed with the murder and begins investigating it.
It seems that living in a perfect, calm , hard working society is a disaster for the health of the “elite” types. What Sinclair uncovers is a therapy developed by Penrose to allow all the elite types to find their dark sides which involves heading to the local towns for violence, sex and other crimes apparently curing all their ailments.
So far a typical Ballard setup except in this case the people don’t stay within Eden-Olympia. It appears the calm life makes them too sane and Penrose prescribes “a carefully metered measure of psychopathy”! “In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom” and “more violence and cruelty, and more drama and rage” was needed in their lives. It’s a dark vision that you only have to scratch the surface and underneath is an underbelly of vice. It’s also a dark view of the ultra capitalists , racist, violent, sexually perverse with little regard for ordinary people’s lives.
The book drew me in from the opening paragraph and the writing conveys the surreal and sinister Eden-Olympia of dystopian future in a region where culture like the film festival for example are figments from the past. Sinclair is a likeable narrator, I wanted him to find the answers.
Sinclair is a grounded pilot after a crash that left his knee damaged. The most sinister person is the first man the couple meet, Wilder Penrose the psychiatrist. He builds up the mystery and strange atmosphere. Sinclair without a job , becomes obsessed with the murder and begins investigating it.
It seems that living in a perfect, calm , hard working society is a disaster for the health of the “elite” types. What Sinclair uncovers is a therapy developed by Penrose to allow all the elite types to find their dark sides which involves heading to the local towns for violence, sex and other crimes apparently curing all their ailments.
So far a typical Ballard setup except in this case the people don’t stay within Eden-Olympia. It appears the calm life makes them too sane and Penrose prescribes “a carefully metered measure of psychopathy”! “In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom” and “more violence and cruelty, and more drama and rage” was needed in their lives. It’s a dark vision that you only have to scratch the surface and underneath is an underbelly of vice. It’s also a dark view of the ultra capitalists , racist, violent, sexually perverse with little regard for ordinary people’s lives.
The book drew me in from the opening paragraph and the writing conveys the surreal and sinister Eden-Olympia of dystopian future in a region where culture like the film festival for example are figments from the past. Sinclair is a likeable narrator, I wanted him to find the answers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2019
It reminded me of Serotonin, which I liked. Worth reading if only for its first half (it becomes predictibly Ballardian in the second) and the supreme writing style.
"Once you dispense with morality the important decisions become a matters of aesthetics. You've entered an adolescent world where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear."
"Once you dispense with morality the important decisions become a matters of aesthetics. You've entered an adolescent world where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear."
November 16, 2020
One of Ballard's better novels, right up there with THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY. A Surrealist neo-noir/murder mystery, like THE LONG GOODBYE narrated by Salvador Dali rather than Philip Marlowe.
September 13, 2021
"The sweat and stench of violence quickened the air and refocused the world."
Ballard returns to typically Ballardian themes - violence, psychopathy, an alien psychology, sex.
It almost reads like a more controlled, and therefor less convincing counterpart to High-Rise. There's a mystery, but it's not very thrilling. There's violence, but it never gets as insane as the book's thematics makes you think it should. And there are the expected Ballard Pixie Dream Girls, who are always younger than the protagonist, always want to have sex with him, and barely have a personality.
The ending is what I expected it would be, after just having started the book. I'm not sure whether that's bad or good. It's probably okay.
All that said, Ballard's writing remains quite beautiful, drawing a detailed picture of Cannes and the business park of doom.
Ballard returns to typically Ballardian themes - violence, psychopathy, an alien psychology, sex.
It almost reads like a more controlled, and therefor less convincing counterpart to High-Rise. There's a mystery, but it's not very thrilling. There's violence, but it never gets as insane as the book's thematics makes you think it should. And there are the expected Ballard Pixie Dream Girls, who are always younger than the protagonist, always want to have sex with him, and barely have a personality.
The ending is what I expected it would be, after just having started the book. I'm not sure whether that's bad or good. It's probably okay.
All that said, Ballard's writing remains quite beautiful, drawing a detailed picture of Cannes and the business park of doom.
April 16, 2014
J.G. Ballard established that architecture can drive you in crazy in High Rise, his 1975 novel in which residents of a new, luxury apartment tower degenerate into tribal warfare. Super-Cannes suggests that the proper response to the new, gated, planned business and residential communities he saw despoiling the Mediterranean French countryside he loved would be a form of orchestrated psychopathology.
Paul and Jane Sinclair relocate from London to the Eden-Olympia, where Jane will be on the medical staff available to the executives and employees of the multinational corporations that have built headquarters there. (I love the name, “Eden-Olympia.” It resonates with the sort of developer overkill that couldn’t decide whether to evoke the innocence of the prelapsarian garden or the mountain home of the all-powerful yet all-so-human gods.) Jane is a pediatrician brought there for a high-paying job. Paul is recovering from a flying accident.
Of course all is not well in this paradise. Jane is replacing David Greenwood, a British doctor who went on a suicidal killing spree. To further complicate matters, Paul thinks that his much younger wife might have been Greenwood’s lover years before in London. Paul and Jane have also been given Greenwood’s home for their new living quarters.
With time on his hands, and not yet ready to settle into the routine of drugs and adultery that seems to keep other residents busy, Paul begins to explore. He finds that the walking paths that meander the campus often end in cul-de-sacs or storage sheds once they disappear into the woods. He is also drawn into solving the mystery of what went wrong with David Greenwood. And since this is a J.G. Ballard novel, Paul soon suspects that something actually went “right” with Greenwood.
Super-Cannes earned an unlikely spot on the list of 100 Best Science Fiction Novels: 1985 – 2010. The plot grows increasingly strange, but it is not really science fiction. Readers approaching it that way are likely to be disappointed. What it is is excellent late Ballard, a dark, funny, ultimately sickening maze that is a times fun to wander through and at other times a panic-inducing cage.
Paul and Jane Sinclair relocate from London to the Eden-Olympia, where Jane will be on the medical staff available to the executives and employees of the multinational corporations that have built headquarters there. (I love the name, “Eden-Olympia.” It resonates with the sort of developer overkill that couldn’t decide whether to evoke the innocence of the prelapsarian garden or the mountain home of the all-powerful yet all-so-human gods.) Jane is a pediatrician brought there for a high-paying job. Paul is recovering from a flying accident.
Of course all is not well in this paradise. Jane is replacing David Greenwood, a British doctor who went on a suicidal killing spree. To further complicate matters, Paul thinks that his much younger wife might have been Greenwood’s lover years before in London. Paul and Jane have also been given Greenwood’s home for their new living quarters.
With time on his hands, and not yet ready to settle into the routine of drugs and adultery that seems to keep other residents busy, Paul begins to explore. He finds that the walking paths that meander the campus often end in cul-de-sacs or storage sheds once they disappear into the woods. He is also drawn into solving the mystery of what went wrong with David Greenwood. And since this is a J.G. Ballard novel, Paul soon suspects that something actually went “right” with Greenwood.
Super-Cannes earned an unlikely spot on the list of 100 Best Science Fiction Novels: 1985 – 2010. The plot grows increasingly strange, but it is not really science fiction. Readers approaching it that way are likely to be disappointed. What it is is excellent late Ballard, a dark, funny, ultimately sickening maze that is a times fun to wander through and at other times a panic-inducing cage.
February 8, 2014
The first third or so of the novel is entrancing 5-star-worthy stuff. I loved the writing (what I can only describe as smooth-edged and contoured, or how about fluid and curvy?) and the budding premise was promising. But things started sliding (elegantly, style oblige)into a faux detective thriller with too much investigation, description, and explanation without enough real examination of the damned premise.
The premise? A bit simplistic with some interesting correlations, although it is frustrating and irritating to see physical violence and sexual perversion automatically lumped into the general category of psychopathy; we all know (or should) by now that psychopaths have a much wider array of choice manipulative behaviors to indulge in (say, lying, cheating, embezzlement, and winning elections), so why automatically equate all transgressive acts with psychopathy? Doc Wilder's 'therapy' seems more akin to slumming and adrenaline fixes to me.
Nice writing, though, and plenty of evocation of smells, scents, odors, etc., from heady fragrances to feral funk. I always appreciate a writer who uses his nose.
The premise? A bit simplistic with some interesting correlations, although it is frustrating and irritating to see physical violence and sexual perversion automatically lumped into the general category of psychopathy; we all know (or should) by now that psychopaths have a much wider array of choice manipulative behaviors to indulge in (say, lying, cheating, embezzlement, and winning elections), so why automatically equate all transgressive acts with psychopathy? Doc Wilder's 'therapy' seems more akin to slumming and adrenaline fixes to me.
Nice writing, though, and plenty of evocation of smells, scents, odors, etc., from heady fragrances to feral funk. I always appreciate a writer who uses his nose.
October 15, 2018
Many reviewers sneer at ‘Super-Cannes’ because they think the author J. G. Ballard repeated himself and said it better in his previous novels. Since I haven't read them, I enjoyed this one very much.
Super-Cannes is a literary Art novel. The plot is an imaginary, and dark, exploration about rewarding merit-based achievements with opportunities to unleash racism and class cruelty. I think this is a terribly flawed story; however, I keep see-sawing between three or four stars. I think 4 stars will be where I'll settle, but I wish I could select three and a half stars. The writing is stellar, even if the plot is far-fetched, and the storyline is a strong kick in the head.
Our hero, a title which I hesitate to use for this morally challenged man, Paul Sinclair, a publisher of aviation journals, and his wife, Dr. Jane Sinclair, a pediatrician/scientist, move to a business park called Eden-Olympia (subtle, eh?), near Cannes in France. Eden-Olympia is a gated community of extremely well-educated professional workers, each primary (and I mean primary!) adult and sometimes a spouse are employed by multinational companies whose offices are throughout the park alongside luxurious houses for the workers, given as part of the free premiums to which invited business elites are entitled. These intellectually gifted elites have a work ethic which matches their business acumen - it is a common to find them hard at work 24/7, finally stopping only when their libidos demand attention.
Paul is crippled, symbolically and in actual fact, having crashed his airplane. His flying wings have been taken away because the accident was determined to have been due to his negligence. His knees were severely injured as well. He can walk, but an infection has set in and Paul is in constant pain. He doesn't seem to be healing. He hangs out at the pool resting his legs or takes long walks, while Jane works at what she considers her dream job, doing the research she has always wanted. She is in her 20's and he is much much older. There are a lot of jokes regarding how Paul robbed the cradle. They are also newlyweds, having met in the hospital during Paul's recovery. Now they are here in Super-Cannes, so called because of the implicit power and money residing within their walls. She signs a 6-month contract, then another, as Paul begins to use his time to investigate a former friend's death. By amazing coincidence, they live in the same house their friend, Dr. David Greenwood, had lived in before he apparently went insane and went on a killing rampage, murdering 7 people.
Paul begins to see and hear disquieting things which make him suspicious of the official report of his friend's murder spree, especially because the security men who worked on Greenwood’s case are definitely unsavory in their deportment. There are cameras everywhere, so there must be recordings, but they've never been seen, having disappeared. Then he finds bullet shells where he shouldn't have, and he catches people in lies. There is a definite coverup going on, but why?
Then, when he comes home after wandering about and having talked to people and seeing some terrible policing incidents with his own eyes, he finds Jane stupefied with injected drugs and he sees she had sex with a neighbor's wife. Upon waking her, she is cheerful and happy, so he says and does nothing. Part of Paul's reticence to become upset is he has shameful secrets of his own, which an Eden-Olympian psychiatrist, Dr. Wilder Penrose, is encouraging him to allow himself to repeat in more depth without embarrassment. Dr. Penrose believes high performing individuals should be permitted to do whatever it takes to relax from their labors, given their contributions to society.
Paul is oddly complacent with the nefarious doings he uncovers. As he digs deeper into the hidden life of Eden-Olympia he seems to feel no need to stop it, much less become emotional over what clearly, to him, isn't his responsibility or problem. In fact, he kinda likes it.
This is my first J. G. Ballard book, and I liked it a lot despite the character exaggerations and the stretched landscape of reality the author indulged in. He wasn't writing a novel as much as he wrapped a story around a soap box disguised as a book to expound a viewpoint against fascism and how fascist thought becomes good to go despite the process of evil necessary to support it. It reminded me of social protest novels similar to some of Emile Zola's, Upton Sinclair's or John Steinbeck's, but Ballard tries too hard in this story to convince readers that human sadism is a general attribute of people who are successful or that hostile energies are what generally fuel the elite intelligencia. What Ballard posits is true of some rich smart educated elites, of course.
I do not believe that most middle-class persons or upper-class persons would seek out sadism to relax, ordinarily. In my opinion, greedy self-indulgence at the expense of others is in reality quite common, but most people do not literally bathe in blood for the fun of it, right?
But on the other hand, what about happened in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Uganda, The Congo, the Soviet Union, Communist China and Nazi Germany? About what is happening in Myanmar, Syria, and Iraq? Religion or political cultism, cultural prejudices, extreme childhood cruelty and psychopathic leaders have convinced entire nations to indulge themselves or at minimum, feel entitled, to be sadistic just because you legally and socially can. I think it is obvious societies will enjoy bloodletting, torture and murder under certain circumstances.
Still, I couldn't entirely buy into this particular cult of all top Western executives and scientists overwhelmingly running wild after a few sessions of permissive philosophy therapy. However, Wall Street certainly is populated by folks who feel their every passing fancy should be indulged because they clearly think themselves gods - as shown by actual emails and recorded phone calls - but even most of them shiver at such immoral and irreversible acts such as murder or torture (I think, right? maybe) - but as we all know, for some, rape is a normalized crime, it should be noted.
Does Ballard actually believe elitism could really be this easily directed into utterly depraved pathological behavior? Does he think everyone possesses and would willingly submit to a dark side of their nature which is this destructive to others, if given philosophical and religious cause to act? Hmmmm.
Super-Cannes is a literary Art novel. The plot is an imaginary, and dark, exploration about rewarding merit-based achievements with opportunities to unleash racism and class cruelty. I think this is a terribly flawed story; however, I keep see-sawing between three or four stars. I think 4 stars will be where I'll settle, but I wish I could select three and a half stars. The writing is stellar, even if the plot is far-fetched, and the storyline is a strong kick in the head.
Our hero, a title which I hesitate to use for this morally challenged man, Paul Sinclair, a publisher of aviation journals, and his wife, Dr. Jane Sinclair, a pediatrician/scientist, move to a business park called Eden-Olympia (subtle, eh?), near Cannes in France. Eden-Olympia is a gated community of extremely well-educated professional workers, each primary (and I mean primary!) adult and sometimes a spouse are employed by multinational companies whose offices are throughout the park alongside luxurious houses for the workers, given as part of the free premiums to which invited business elites are entitled. These intellectually gifted elites have a work ethic which matches their business acumen - it is a common to find them hard at work 24/7, finally stopping only when their libidos demand attention.
Paul is crippled, symbolically and in actual fact, having crashed his airplane. His flying wings have been taken away because the accident was determined to have been due to his negligence. His knees were severely injured as well. He can walk, but an infection has set in and Paul is in constant pain. He doesn't seem to be healing. He hangs out at the pool resting his legs or takes long walks, while Jane works at what she considers her dream job, doing the research she has always wanted. She is in her 20's and he is much much older. There are a lot of jokes regarding how Paul robbed the cradle. They are also newlyweds, having met in the hospital during Paul's recovery. Now they are here in Super-Cannes, so called because of the implicit power and money residing within their walls. She signs a 6-month contract, then another, as Paul begins to use his time to investigate a former friend's death. By amazing coincidence, they live in the same house their friend, Dr. David Greenwood, had lived in before he apparently went insane and went on a killing rampage, murdering 7 people.
Paul begins to see and hear disquieting things which make him suspicious of the official report of his friend's murder spree, especially because the security men who worked on Greenwood’s case are definitely unsavory in their deportment. There are cameras everywhere, so there must be recordings, but they've never been seen, having disappeared. Then he finds bullet shells where he shouldn't have, and he catches people in lies. There is a definite coverup going on, but why?
Then, when he comes home after wandering about and having talked to people and seeing some terrible policing incidents with his own eyes, he finds Jane stupefied with injected drugs and he sees she had sex with a neighbor's wife. Upon waking her, she is cheerful and happy, so he says and does nothing. Part of Paul's reticence to become upset is he has shameful secrets of his own, which an Eden-Olympian psychiatrist, Dr. Wilder Penrose, is encouraging him to allow himself to repeat in more depth without embarrassment. Dr. Penrose believes high performing individuals should be permitted to do whatever it takes to relax from their labors, given their contributions to society.
Paul is oddly complacent with the nefarious doings he uncovers. As he digs deeper into the hidden life of Eden-Olympia he seems to feel no need to stop it, much less become emotional over what clearly, to him, isn't his responsibility or problem. In fact, he kinda likes it.
This is my first J. G. Ballard book, and I liked it a lot despite the character exaggerations and the stretched landscape of reality the author indulged in. He wasn't writing a novel as much as he wrapped a story around a soap box disguised as a book to expound a viewpoint against fascism and how fascist thought becomes good to go despite the process of evil necessary to support it. It reminded me of social protest novels similar to some of Emile Zola's, Upton Sinclair's or John Steinbeck's, but Ballard tries too hard in this story to convince readers that human sadism is a general attribute of people who are successful or that hostile energies are what generally fuel the elite intelligencia. What Ballard posits is true of some rich smart educated elites, of course.
I do not believe that most middle-class persons or upper-class persons would seek out sadism to relax, ordinarily. In my opinion, greedy self-indulgence at the expense of others is in reality quite common, but most people do not literally bathe in blood for the fun of it, right?
But on the other hand, what about happened in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Uganda, The Congo, the Soviet Union, Communist China and Nazi Germany? About what is happening in Myanmar, Syria, and Iraq? Religion or political cultism, cultural prejudices, extreme childhood cruelty and psychopathic leaders have convinced entire nations to indulge themselves or at minimum, feel entitled, to be sadistic just because you legally and socially can. I think it is obvious societies will enjoy bloodletting, torture and murder under certain circumstances.
Still, I couldn't entirely buy into this particular cult of all top Western executives and scientists overwhelmingly running wild after a few sessions of permissive philosophy therapy. However, Wall Street certainly is populated by folks who feel their every passing fancy should be indulged because they clearly think themselves gods - as shown by actual emails and recorded phone calls - but even most of them shiver at such immoral and irreversible acts such as murder or torture (I think, right? maybe) - but as we all know, for some, rape is a normalized crime, it should be noted.
Does Ballard actually believe elitism could really be this easily directed into utterly depraved pathological behavior? Does he think everyone possesses and would willingly submit to a dark side of their nature which is this destructive to others, if given philosophical and religious cause to act? Hmmmm.
April 21, 2021
Βαθμολογία: 9/10
Τελευταία φορά που διάβασα βιβλίο του Τζέιμς Γκράχαμ Μπάλαρντ ήταν τον Νοέμβριο του 2017, τότε που απόλαυσα το βίαιο και κυνικό "High-Rise", ένα μυθιστόρημα που σε καμία περίπτωση δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Το "Super-Cannes", που κυκλοφόρησε πριν λίγες μέρες στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Κέδρος, είναι το έβδομο βιβλίο του συγγραφέα που διαβάζω και το τρίτο που θα του βάλω πέντε αστεράκια (τεσσεράμισι για την ακρίβεια), γιατί με τη σειρά του μου άρεσε και αυτό πάρα πολύ.
Η περίληψη στο οπισθόφυλλο της ελληνικής έκδοσης, λέει τα εξής: "Στους λόφους πάνω από τις Κάννες, η Εδέμ-Ολυμπία, το επιχειρηματικό πάρκο του μέλλοντος, φιλοξενεί τις κορυφαίες εταιρίες υψηλής τεχνολογίας και τα στελέχη τους. Η κλειστή αυτή κοινότητα προσφέρει τις ιδανικές συνθήκες, ώστε τα μέλη της να αφοσιώνονται ολοκληρωτικά στην εργασία εκμηδενίζοντας κάθε ανάγκη για ψυχαγωγία, κοινωνική επαφή και ελεύθερο χρόνο. Μια μέρα, εντελώς ξαφνικά, ο Ντέιβιντ Γκρίνγουντ, γιατρός της κλινικής του επιχειρηματικού πάρκου, σε κατάσταση αμόκ, σκοτώνει δέκα ανθρώπους και στη συνέχεια αυτοκτονεί. Η γιατρός Τζέιν Σίνκλερ, που προσλαμβάνεται στη θέση του, εγκαθίσταται μαζί με τον άντρα της Πολ στο σπίτι του νεκρού γιατρού. Έχοντας άφθονο χρόνο στη διάθεσή του, ο Πολ αρχίζει να αναζητά τους λόγους που οδήγησαν τον Γκρίνγουντ στα άκρα και ανακαλύπτει μια άλλη, άγρια, πλευρά της ζωής στο επιχειρηματικό πάρκο".
Εννοείται ότι πριν καν το πιάσω στα χέρια μου ήξερα ότι θα μου αρέσει, γιατί από τη μια η βασική ιδέα της πλοκής είναι από αυτές που πάντα με ιντριγκάρουν, ενώ από την άλλη πρόκειται για βιβλίο του Μπάλαρντ, η γραφή του οποίου λίγο έως πολύ ταιριάζει με τα αναγνωστικά μου γούστα. Από την πρώτη κιόλας σελίδα ο συγγραφέας κατάφερε να με μεταφέρει στον σκληρό και κυνικό κόσμο του και να μου παρουσιάσει μια μίνι καπιταλιστική κοινωνία στην οποία η παράνοια και οι διαστροφές είναι στην ημερήσια διάταξη. Ο Μπάλαρντ σε πολλά βιβλία του αναδεικνύει τη σκοτεινή πλευρά του καπιταλισμού και των τεχνολογικών εξελίξεων -που ίσως αλλοιώνουν την ανθρώπινη φύση-, με κλινικό και μερικές φορές αποστασιοποιημένο τρόπο, όντας από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος εξαιρετικά κυνικός και έχοντας μια αρκετά μαύρη αίσθηση του χιούμορ, και στο μυθιστόρημα αυτό σίγουρα προσφέρει πολλά από τα καλούδια του.
Ναι, το βιβλίο με άφησε ιδιαίτερα ικανοποιημένο, με κράτησε σε αγωνία, μου έδειξε μια άλλη, σκοτεινή πλευρά της κοινωνίας στην οποία ζούμε (το βιβλίο γράφτηκε πριν από είκοσι χρόνια, αλλά δεν έχουν αλλάξει και τόσα πολλά από τότε), μου έδωσε και λίγη τροφή για σκέψη με κάποιες ιδέες φιλοσοφικής φύσεως, σίγουρα όμως δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα, μιας και το στιλ γραφής και ο τρόπος σκέψης του Μπάλαρντ δεν είναι για όλους. Προσωπικά, όμως, τον γουστάρω σαν συγγραφέα. Και το "Super-Cannes" ίσως να είναι κάπως λιγότερο έντονο και βίαιο από το "High-Rise" -έχει το διπλάσιο μέγεθος, άρα σίγουρα σε μερικά σημεία ξεφεύγει και πολυλογεί-, όμως το βρήκα εξίσου καλογραμμένο και ιντριγκαδόρικο.
Τελευταία φορά που διάβασα βιβλίο του Τζέιμς Γκράχαμ Μπάλαρντ ήταν τον Νοέμβριο του 2017, τότε που απόλαυσα το βίαιο και κυνικό "High-Rise", ένα μυθιστόρημα που σε καμία περίπτωση δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα. Το "Super-Cannes", που κυκλοφόρησε πριν λίγες μέρες στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Κέδρος, είναι το έβδομο βιβλίο του συγγραφέα που διαβάζω και το τρίτο που θα του βάλω πέντε αστεράκια (τεσσεράμισι για την ακρίβεια), γιατί με τη σειρά του μου άρεσε και αυτό πάρα πολύ.
Η περίληψη στο οπισθόφυλλο της ελληνικής έκδοσης, λέει τα εξής: "Στους λόφους πάνω από τις Κάννες, η Εδέμ-Ολυμπία, το επιχειρηματικό πάρκο του μέλλοντος, φιλοξενεί τις κορυφαίες εταιρίες υψηλής τεχνολογίας και τα στελέχη τους. Η κλειστή αυτή κοινότητα προσφέρει τις ιδανικές συνθήκες, ώστε τα μέλη της να αφοσιώνονται ολοκληρωτικά στην εργασία εκμηδενίζοντας κάθε ανάγκη για ψυχαγωγία, κοινωνική επαφή και ελεύθερο χρόνο. Μια μέρα, εντελώς ξαφνικά, ο Ντέιβιντ Γκρίνγουντ, γιατρός της κλινικής του επιχειρηματικού πάρκου, σε κατάσταση αμόκ, σκοτώνει δέκα ανθρώπους και στη συνέχεια αυτοκτονεί. Η γιατρός Τζέιν Σίνκλερ, που προσλαμβάνεται στη θέση του, εγκαθίσταται μαζί με τον άντρα της Πολ στο σπίτι του νεκρού γιατρού. Έχοντας άφθονο χρόνο στη διάθεσή του, ο Πολ αρχίζει να αναζητά τους λόγους που οδήγησαν τον Γκρίνγουντ στα άκρα και ανακαλύπτει μια άλλη, άγρια, πλευρά της ζωής στο επιχειρηματικό πάρκο".
Εννοείται ότι πριν καν το πιάσω στα χέρια μου ήξερα ότι θα μου αρέσει, γιατί από τη μια η βασική ιδέα της πλοκής είναι από αυτές που πάντα με ιντριγκάρουν, ενώ από την άλλη πρόκειται για βιβλίο του Μπάλαρντ, η γραφή του οποίου λίγο έως πολύ ταιριάζει με τα αναγνωστικά μου γούστα. Από την πρώτη κιόλας σελίδα ο συγγραφέας κατάφερε να με μεταφέρει στον σκληρό και κυνικό κόσμο του και να μου παρουσιάσει μια μίνι καπιταλιστική κοινωνία στην οποία η παράνοια και οι διαστροφές είναι στην ημερήσια διάταξη. Ο Μπάλαρντ σε πολλά βιβλία του αναδεικνύει τη σκοτεινή πλευρά του καπιταλισμού και των τεχνολογικών εξελίξεων -που ίσως αλλοιώνουν την ανθρώπινη φύση-, με κλινικό και μερικές φορές αποστασιοποιημένο τρόπο, όντας από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος εξαιρετικά κυνικός και έχοντας μια αρκετά μαύρη αίσθηση του χιούμορ, και στο μυθιστόρημα αυτό σίγουρα προσφέρει πολλά από τα καλούδια του.
Ναι, το βιβλίο με άφησε ιδιαίτερα ικανοποιημένο, με κράτησε σε αγωνία, μου έδειξε μια άλλη, σκοτεινή πλευρά της κοινωνίας στην οποία ζούμε (το βιβλίο γράφτηκε πριν από είκοσι χρόνια, αλλά δεν έχουν αλλάξει και τόσα πολλά από τότε), μου έδωσε και λίγη τροφή για σκέψη με κάποιες ιδέες φιλοσοφικής φύσεως, σίγουρα όμως δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα, μιας και το στιλ γραφής και ο τρόπος σκέψης του Μπάλαρντ δεν είναι για όλους. Προσωπικά, όμως, τον γουστάρω σαν συγγραφέα. Και το "Super-Cannes" ίσως να είναι κάπως λιγότερο έντονο και βίαιο από το "High-Rise" -έχει το διπλάσιο μέγεθος, άρα σίγουρα σε μερικά σημεία ξεφεύγει και πολυλογεί-, όμως το βρήκα εξίσου καλογραμμένο και ιντριγκαδόρικο.
August 29, 2014
I liked Ballard's _High Rise_ very much. This book is not that. Well, that's not really true. It's High Rise set in Cannes, with more words and bad, nonsensical metaphors.
This book relies on a psychological explanation that goes on too long. It's not really hard to understand that people, especially privileged people, like sex, drugs, and violence, and they like committing crimes on people who are less likely to fight back. The plot revolves around a mystery that isn't really a mystery--what's going on "behind the scenes" at this perfect business park. The foreshadowing is heavy-handed, and the clues are obvious and overstated. And I can't believe I read the whole book for that ending.
The narrator is unlikable, partly because he's gross and married someone way younger (not a deal-breaker in itself, but that coupled with his dismissive disdain for women in general makes him one of "those guys") and partly because he gets off on the violence he sees or has described to him. He's supposed to be the detective figuring out the secrets, but he's entirely too sympathetic to the villains' point of view. There's no tension there. The set-up there makes him act in inexplicable ways.
His wife also acts for unknown reasons. I can't understand how she could be such a smart woman for him to fall in love with and end up with no will of her own. I can't understand how she can say she's happy at Eden-Olympia. And all the references to her or to pubescent girls (because those are THE SAME: a grown woman and little girls) as Alice in Wonderland, and ripe for exploitation, are just gross. Referring to another work doesn't make your book "literature." And if Alice was so great because she got into and out of situations because of her logical common sense (which I also disagree with as a reading of that story--I don't think Alice is the heart of logic in those books), then are you making your book worse than that by having your Alice fall apart in the end? Sad, sad. Eden, Olympia, Alice in Wonderland. Write your own story, don't rely on a bunch of allusions to provide gravitas.
The name of the business park (assuming it's not based on an actual business park because I refuse to look that up and give this book any more of my time after this review) is indicative of the problems with the novel: it's not just Eden or Olympus--it's BOTH. Again, High Rise was interesting in part for its sparseness. In this book, there are too many words thrown at roughly the same issue, just 25 years later. And he's gone from showing the problems of technology and "modern" life to telling--sentences that could be thesis statements in someone's anti-technology, anti-corporate manifesto. Boring, boring.
This book relies on a psychological explanation that goes on too long. It's not really hard to understand that people, especially privileged people, like sex, drugs, and violence, and they like committing crimes on people who are less likely to fight back. The plot revolves around a mystery that isn't really a mystery--what's going on "behind the scenes" at this perfect business park. The foreshadowing is heavy-handed, and the clues are obvious and overstated. And I can't believe I read the whole book for that ending.
The narrator is unlikable, partly because he's gross and married someone way younger (not a deal-breaker in itself, but that coupled with his dismissive disdain for women in general makes him one of "those guys") and partly because he gets off on the violence he sees or has described to him. He's supposed to be the detective figuring out the secrets, but he's entirely too sympathetic to the villains' point of view. There's no tension there. The set-up there makes him act in inexplicable ways.
His wife also acts for unknown reasons. I can't understand how she could be such a smart woman for him to fall in love with and end up with no will of her own. I can't understand how she can say she's happy at Eden-Olympia. And all the references to her or to pubescent girls (because those are THE SAME: a grown woman and little girls) as Alice in Wonderland, and ripe for exploitation, are just gross. Referring to another work doesn't make your book "literature." And if Alice was so great because she got into and out of situations because of her logical common sense (which I also disagree with as a reading of that story--I don't think Alice is the heart of logic in those books), then are you making your book worse than that by having your Alice fall apart in the end? Sad, sad. Eden, Olympia, Alice in Wonderland. Write your own story, don't rely on a bunch of allusions to provide gravitas.
The name of the business park (assuming it's not based on an actual business park because I refuse to look that up and give this book any more of my time after this review) is indicative of the problems with the novel: it's not just Eden or Olympus--it's BOTH. Again, High Rise was interesting in part for its sparseness. In this book, there are too many words thrown at roughly the same issue, just 25 years later. And he's gone from showing the problems of technology and "modern" life to telling--sentences that could be thesis statements in someone's anti-technology, anti-corporate manifesto. Boring, boring.
August 28, 2021
I see that some reviewers here have already noted that Super-Cannes appears, at first glance, to be an extended variation and expansion of the basic plot structure of Ballard's previous novel, Cocaine Nights. While this is true, Super-Cannes is also something of a re-assessment of all of Ballard's previous work, fitted in to a more accessible standard novelistic plot. Not only the basic situation of Cocaine Nights, in which a kind of leisure director at a super anemic corporate institution hits upon petty, thuggish acts of violence and perverse sexuality as the perfect antidote for an overly sanitized super modern lifestyle, but also elements of automobile-eroticism from Crash as well as the psychic power of modern images of historical violence, such as the Kennedy assassination of The Atrocity Exhibition and Hello America also creep in. Thus Super-Cannes acts as a kind of mainstream recapitulation of Ballard's best work in the novel format. While my own taste makes me appreciate the earlier, rougher, and much more raw experimentations in the novel form of his early work (once he departs the disaster sci fi novel), and these, I believe, wonderfully on-track dystopic ideas and images, for the mainstream reader I would call this Ballard's best, or at least the best example of his work overall. So, if you're only going to read one of Ballard's novels to see what it's all about, I would highly recommend it be this one. But, if, like me, you prefer more inspired and immediate experimentation, and these ideas resonate with you, I would turn to The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Running Wild, Concrete Island, and Hello America as purer examples of the best of his artistry.
December 28, 2021
On the surface, this book is a mass-murder mystery set in a corporate campus on the outskirts of Cannes. Why did the campus paediatrician run amok with a rifle? Paul, the hobbled husband of the replacement paediatrician, becomes a Rear-Window-style accidental sleuth.
But under the surface, this business-park colony was a new world based on psychopathology -- a horizontal High-Rise. And Paul's involvement might not have been so accidental.
Ballard's writing wore me out. It seemed padded with too many adjectives, too many similes, and too much Riviera-scape (I got the impression that Ballard could use a holiday on Tenerife). The story had too much pain au chocolat and not enough pain au truncheon.
But under the surface, this business-park colony was a new world based on psychopathology -- a horizontal High-Rise. And Paul's involvement might not have been so accidental.
Ballard's writing wore me out. It seemed padded with too many adjectives, too many similes, and too much Riviera-scape (I got the impression that Ballard could use a holiday on Tenerife). The story had too much pain au chocolat and not enough pain au truncheon.
May 17, 2008
Excellent. Actively sought out bus trips to find reasons to not to anything else but read this book.
November 9, 2023
A very forward-thinking pre-9/11 work. Mass surveillance as ubiquitous, the rise of homegrown right wing terrorism (notably Ballard predicts that Muslims and non-white immigrants will be the easy targets), the superficial tolerance of neoliberalism which barely veils an unrestrained class violence, and the increasing outsourcing of culture and ethics to an isolated class of political-industrial technicians. Eden-Olympia, the novels fictional Silicone Valley-esque setting, resembles precisely the sterilized think-tank-mandated environment from which have emerged our visionary free-market despots, the Jeff Bezos', Elon Musks, Steve Jobs' and Jeffery Epsteins of the world.
May 28, 2012
Magnifico.
Qui c'è tutto il Ballard che conta, il più acuto indagatore delle nuove forme di mala-società (passatemi il termine). Ci si ritrovano le idee che hanno reso riconoscibile e unica la sua disturbante narrativa e, in nuce, quelle poi approfondite in Regno a venire, l'ultimo suo romanzo.
Il dottor Wilder Penrose è un personaggio memorabile. La sua idea di preservare la salute e l'efficienza lavorativa della élite neo-borghese di Super-Cannes attraverso trattamenti terapeutici basati su programmati sfoghi di psicopatologia è terrificante.
E credo, in fin dei conti, sostanzialmente corretta.
Qui c'è tutto il Ballard che conta, il più acuto indagatore delle nuove forme di mala-società (passatemi il termine). Ci si ritrovano le idee che hanno reso riconoscibile e unica la sua disturbante narrativa e, in nuce, quelle poi approfondite in Regno a venire, l'ultimo suo romanzo.
Il dottor Wilder Penrose è un personaggio memorabile. La sua idea di preservare la salute e l'efficienza lavorativa della élite neo-borghese di Super-Cannes attraverso trattamenti terapeutici basati su programmati sfoghi di psicopatologia è terrificante.
E credo, in fin dei conti, sostanzialmente corretta.
July 9, 2019
Ballard was prescient, even prophetic. Written in 2K, this novel is of the utmost actuality: mass shootings, absence of a moral compass, populist and extreme-right violence. A magisterial explanation of our troubled and troubling times, Super-Cannes enthralls with its hallucinatory descriptions and clear-sighted sociological musings. Man, this story ain't reassuring, but what a ride. Using an ultra-naturalistic narrative voice, Ballard builds a world that is both real and sci-fi, convincing and entertaining, shocking and plausible. It's The Drowned World meets Durkheim. Yeah, I liked it. Hope you do too.
February 25, 2022
SUPER-CANNES je privukao pažnju ljubitelja kriminalističkog žanra nedavno kada je najavljeno da će ga ekranizovati Brandon Cronenberg, sin Davida Cronenberg koji je uveo pojam "ballardovskog" u film još pre nego što je snimio film CRASH po njegovom romanu.
SUPER-CANNES je u osnovi krimić ali je kao i drugi Ballardovi romani u ovoj fazi koju čine još COCAINE NIGHST, MILLENNIUM PEOPLE i KINGDOM COME, prevashodno "roman ideja".
No, kako se ovde bavimo krimićima osvrnuo bih se prvo na taj aspekt ove knjige. Ovo je u osnovi whydunit gde imamo zločin i znamo počinioca ali ne znamo tačne motive i okolnosti koje su dovele do izvršenja. Glavni junak je Paul Sinclair, ostareli pilot koji se sa svojom mladom suprugom lekarkom doseljava u jedan imaginarni luksuzni industrijski park iznad Kana u kom se nalaze istraživački centri ali i luksuzni bungalovi rukovodilaca velikih svetskih korporacija. Njegova žena je tu došla umesto lekara koji je prethodno izvršio masovno ubistvo u tom naselju.
Sinclair postaje opsednut zločinom, kreće da ga istražuje i otkriva vrlo perverznu, višeslojnu i imaginativnu "priču iza priče" koja se u Ballardovskom maniru bavi temama kolektivnog ludila, zločina, krize viših klasa i jednim delom je isprobana u njegovoj noveli RUNNING WILD, koja je nedavno takođe kaparisana za ekranizaciju.
SUPER-CANNES nudi zanimljivu misteriju i veoma potentnu studiju karaktera sa izuzetno jakim društveno-kritičkim potencijalom. Uprkos tome što su se od nastanka ovog romana do danas poslovne elite ipak dosta izmenile i stvari su pošle u smeru frictionless kapitalizma, ovaj rukopis nije izgubio svoju validnost.
Kada je Ben Wheatley snimio ekranizaciju romana HIGH-RISE on je ostao u epohi romana, delom zbog fetišizma, delom zbog toga što bi savremeni setting zahtevao da se uvede tema migracija koje nema u romanu. Ovaj film se dešava na prelazu iz analogne u digitalnu eru pa čak nije ni sasvim anahron, ali ne znam kako će mu se prići u adaptaciji. No, sami likovi i psihološko-socijalni fenomen koji roman kritikuje su i dalje validni.
SUPER-CANNES je u osnovi krimić ali je kao i drugi Ballardovi romani u ovoj fazi koju čine još COCAINE NIGHST, MILLENNIUM PEOPLE i KINGDOM COME, prevashodno "roman ideja".
No, kako se ovde bavimo krimićima osvrnuo bih se prvo na taj aspekt ove knjige. Ovo je u osnovi whydunit gde imamo zločin i znamo počinioca ali ne znamo tačne motive i okolnosti koje su dovele do izvršenja. Glavni junak je Paul Sinclair, ostareli pilot koji se sa svojom mladom suprugom lekarkom doseljava u jedan imaginarni luksuzni industrijski park iznad Kana u kom se nalaze istraživački centri ali i luksuzni bungalovi rukovodilaca velikih svetskih korporacija. Njegova žena je tu došla umesto lekara koji je prethodno izvršio masovno ubistvo u tom naselju.
Sinclair postaje opsednut zločinom, kreće da ga istražuje i otkriva vrlo perverznu, višeslojnu i imaginativnu "priču iza priče" koja se u Ballardovskom maniru bavi temama kolektivnog ludila, zločina, krize viših klasa i jednim delom je isprobana u njegovoj noveli RUNNING WILD, koja je nedavno takođe kaparisana za ekranizaciju.
SUPER-CANNES nudi zanimljivu misteriju i veoma potentnu studiju karaktera sa izuzetno jakim društveno-kritičkim potencijalom. Uprkos tome što su se od nastanka ovog romana do danas poslovne elite ipak dosta izmenile i stvari su pošle u smeru frictionless kapitalizma, ovaj rukopis nije izgubio svoju validnost.
Kada je Ben Wheatley snimio ekranizaciju romana HIGH-RISE on je ostao u epohi romana, delom zbog fetišizma, delom zbog toga što bi savremeni setting zahtevao da se uvede tema migracija koje nema u romanu. Ovaj film se dešava na prelazu iz analogne u digitalnu eru pa čak nije ni sasvim anahron, ali ne znam kako će mu se prići u adaptaciji. No, sami likovi i psihološko-socijalni fenomen koji roman kritikuje su i dalje validni.
June 27, 2020
Level two after Condominium
“La prima persona che incontrai ad Eden-Olympia fu uno psichiatra, e forse il fatto che sia stato proprio uno specialista in malattie mentali a farmi da guida in questa città intelligente sulle colline sopra Cannes non fu affatto un caso……Solo quando imparai finalmente ad apprezzare quest’uomo labile e pericoloso riuscii a pensare di ucciderlo.”
La paranoia che permeava le pagine di uno dei più riusciti tra i libri di Ballard, “il Condominio” torna ad essere il punto focale della sua ultima opera. Una paranoia di tipo sociale, con caratteristiche molto peculiari, la cui culla torna ad essere, come per Condominio, un complesso residenziale ad alta tecnologia, abitato esclusivamente da professionisti. La novità di quest’ultimo lavoro sta nel fatto che il nuovissimo complesso sulle colline di Cannes è un progetto pilota, una sorta di centro tecnologico del futuro, dove nessuno si occupa di niente che non sia il suo lavoro: niente riunioni di condominio, né gestioni amministrative, neanche l’ombra dei vecchi noiosissimi formalismi che erano l’etichetta del vivere sociale negli anni passati. Il dottor Penrose, psichiatra e operatore di gran rilievo nella comunità di Eden-Olympia è lo psicopompo che guida i protagonisti e il lettore stranito nei meandri del “laboratorio per il nuovo millennio”.
Jane e Paul Sinclair giungono ad Eden-Olympia dall’Inghilterra, lei come pediatra chiamata a sostituire il defunto dottor Greenwood, suo amico e collega che, colto da follia repentina ha appena ammazzato dieci persone a colpi di fucile prima di togliersi la vita. Ovviamente questo è solo un piccolo incidente senza importanza, del resto non è facile prevedere l’esplodere della follia in un così perfetto microcosmo, organizzato in modo così minuzioso da lasciare fuori tutto quello che non è perfezione e quindi la follia, unico elemento imprevedibile non può che sorprendere tutti. Dallo psichiatra, esterrefatto spettatore di una furia incontrollata, agli agenti della sicurezza il cui unico compito finora era stato quello di tenere lontani i venditori ambulanti e che, proprio perché impreparati vengono colti totalmente alla sprovvista dall’incedere della distruzione.
Non è un libro positivo, questo di Ballard, si potrebbe definire la versione aggiornata e, del resto quasi possibile, di Condominio. I protagonisti sono tutti presi dal lavoro, come molti di noi nel quotidiano affannarsi alla conquista dell’affermazione, i loro passatempi sono solo di poco più estremi dei nostri: c’è il professionista che spinge la propria auto sul rettilineo di costiera, in un pericoloso quanto eccitante gioco di inseguimenti, oppure la vicina di casa che si spoglia con le tende tirate e che guarda la moglie del suo vicino fare altrettanto…..in tutto questo operare stranezze, Paul unico disoccupato abitatore del complesso, indaga, dapprima come per gioco e successivamente per necessità. Il finale, unico possibile epilogo in questo gioco all’alienazione, è quanto di più bello e nel contempo doloroso si possa immaginare e il lettore, portato per mano fino alla naturale conclusione, non può che identificarsi col cronenberghiano protagonista, ultimo sano di mente in un mondo che lo spinge verso la follia.
J.G.BALLARD - Super Cannes –
Canguri Feltrinelli novembre 2000
Pp. 372
“La prima persona che incontrai ad Eden-Olympia fu uno psichiatra, e forse il fatto che sia stato proprio uno specialista in malattie mentali a farmi da guida in questa città intelligente sulle colline sopra Cannes non fu affatto un caso……Solo quando imparai finalmente ad apprezzare quest’uomo labile e pericoloso riuscii a pensare di ucciderlo.”
La paranoia che permeava le pagine di uno dei più riusciti tra i libri di Ballard, “il Condominio” torna ad essere il punto focale della sua ultima opera. Una paranoia di tipo sociale, con caratteristiche molto peculiari, la cui culla torna ad essere, come per Condominio, un complesso residenziale ad alta tecnologia, abitato esclusivamente da professionisti. La novità di quest’ultimo lavoro sta nel fatto che il nuovissimo complesso sulle colline di Cannes è un progetto pilota, una sorta di centro tecnologico del futuro, dove nessuno si occupa di niente che non sia il suo lavoro: niente riunioni di condominio, né gestioni amministrative, neanche l’ombra dei vecchi noiosissimi formalismi che erano l’etichetta del vivere sociale negli anni passati. Il dottor Penrose, psichiatra e operatore di gran rilievo nella comunità di Eden-Olympia è lo psicopompo che guida i protagonisti e il lettore stranito nei meandri del “laboratorio per il nuovo millennio”.
Jane e Paul Sinclair giungono ad Eden-Olympia dall’Inghilterra, lei come pediatra chiamata a sostituire il defunto dottor Greenwood, suo amico e collega che, colto da follia repentina ha appena ammazzato dieci persone a colpi di fucile prima di togliersi la vita. Ovviamente questo è solo un piccolo incidente senza importanza, del resto non è facile prevedere l’esplodere della follia in un così perfetto microcosmo, organizzato in modo così minuzioso da lasciare fuori tutto quello che non è perfezione e quindi la follia, unico elemento imprevedibile non può che sorprendere tutti. Dallo psichiatra, esterrefatto spettatore di una furia incontrollata, agli agenti della sicurezza il cui unico compito finora era stato quello di tenere lontani i venditori ambulanti e che, proprio perché impreparati vengono colti totalmente alla sprovvista dall’incedere della distruzione.
Non è un libro positivo, questo di Ballard, si potrebbe definire la versione aggiornata e, del resto quasi possibile, di Condominio. I protagonisti sono tutti presi dal lavoro, come molti di noi nel quotidiano affannarsi alla conquista dell’affermazione, i loro passatempi sono solo di poco più estremi dei nostri: c’è il professionista che spinge la propria auto sul rettilineo di costiera, in un pericoloso quanto eccitante gioco di inseguimenti, oppure la vicina di casa che si spoglia con le tende tirate e che guarda la moglie del suo vicino fare altrettanto…..in tutto questo operare stranezze, Paul unico disoccupato abitatore del complesso, indaga, dapprima come per gioco e successivamente per necessità. Il finale, unico possibile epilogo in questo gioco all’alienazione, è quanto di più bello e nel contempo doloroso si possa immaginare e il lettore, portato per mano fino alla naturale conclusione, non può che identificarsi col cronenberghiano protagonista, ultimo sano di mente in un mondo che lo spinge verso la follia.
J.G.BALLARD - Super Cannes –
Canguri Feltrinelli novembre 2000
Pp. 372
January 1, 2018
I loved this one!
I've always said about Ballard previously that the elements of his novels are out of whack. The descriptions are always amazing but the story never adds up. The descriptions are AMAZING though. The Drowned World is something I'm afraid to read again because the world of it lives in my mind, which I always think is a fragile thing.
Anyway, this one gets all the elements. The world weaves with the story immaculately! An incredible Ballard experience.
I maintain that his characters always seem too posh for what they're up to, though—by which I mean they display an inappropriate decorum. For example:
Martha: St John, it appears that I've just eaten our first cousin twice removed, Juliette.
St John: My, Martha. That's quite awful.
Martha: Quite.
St John: Might you fancy a spot of cocaine to see you through this unfortunate time?
Martha: Well indeed I might, St John. That's very generous of you. Thanks.
St John: Oh it's no bother, Martha. No bother at all.
I've always said about Ballard previously that the elements of his novels are out of whack. The descriptions are always amazing but the story never adds up. The descriptions are AMAZING though. The Drowned World is something I'm afraid to read again because the world of it lives in my mind, which I always think is a fragile thing.
Anyway, this one gets all the elements. The world weaves with the story immaculately! An incredible Ballard experience.
I maintain that his characters always seem too posh for what they're up to, though—by which I mean they display an inappropriate decorum. For example:
Martha: St John, it appears that I've just eaten our first cousin twice removed, Juliette.
St John: My, Martha. That's quite awful.
Martha: Quite.
St John: Might you fancy a spot of cocaine to see you through this unfortunate time?
Martha: Well indeed I might, St John. That's very generous of you. Thanks.
St John: Oh it's no bother, Martha. No bother at all.
January 27, 2018
Another of Ballard's dystopian novels set in a dense living situation - rather than a skyscraper, it is a residential/business park on the French Riviera packed with representatives of multinational corporations and their in-house medical staff.
A private pilot, semi-retired after having been sidelined by an injury, moves there with his younger physician wife and has a lot of free time on his hands to attempt to unravel the mystery of why his wife's predecessor went on a mass-shooting rampage some months earlier. As is common, the shooting culminated in the shooter's own death, hence lots of unanswered questions.
A resident psychiatrist with a crude social Darwinist worldview proves to have some novel ideas about how to ensure optimal mental and physical health among the residents.
The type of community Ballard uses as his setting is not one I have direct experience of. He includes a brief foreword listing the real life models he used and seemed to think (in 2000), they represented an insidious development in human social organization.
A private pilot, semi-retired after having been sidelined by an injury, moves there with his younger physician wife and has a lot of free time on his hands to attempt to unravel the mystery of why his wife's predecessor went on a mass-shooting rampage some months earlier. As is common, the shooting culminated in the shooter's own death, hence lots of unanswered questions.
A resident psychiatrist with a crude social Darwinist worldview proves to have some novel ideas about how to ensure optimal mental and physical health among the residents.
The type of community Ballard uses as his setting is not one I have direct experience of. He includes a brief foreword listing the real life models he used and seemed to think (in 2000), they represented an insidious development in human social organization.
August 18, 2021
Another air-conditioned meritocratic dystopia of bourgeois narcissists hungry for murderous authenticity. Ballard's style.eschews active for passive voice and density, as is the case for most of his work.
March 1, 2024
Una visión terrible y descarnada del inicio del mundo de los nuevos señores del technofeudalismo. El ocio es de pobres y de perdedores, trabajar mil horas al día todos los días de la semana es el nuevo ocio y nada mejor para ello que un Silicon Valley europeo creado en la costa azul sobre Cannes. Da miedo pensar que este escrito hace casi ¼ de siglo y que sin embargo no cueste nada reconocer nuestro presente.
May 4, 2016
I think if I had a shelf called "yech" I would list this book on it. I mean, really? I got sick of hearing it. I got sick of the sickos running this "multi-national business park" called Eden Olympia. What kind of a future were they creating? There were no kids in the book except the shadow kids we hear about being used for sex. There were so many films of crimes, both of sex and just beating the life out of "Arabs" and "immigrants" that it felt like a sick version of the Nixon White House and the Watergate scandal. Sorry for insulting Nixon and his White House; they were nothing compared to Eden Olympia. But there are some parallels with taping and filming and with the official sanctioned government thugs. In Eden Olympia the author calls these bands of executive thugs out for some fun 'the bowling team' because they wear matching leather jackets. Evidently beating people up really cleanses the psyche, releases tension and keeps them safe from viruses.
David Greenwood was a British doctor working at Eden Olympia. One of those sainted types; loved by everyone, working so hard, giving his all to both the population in Eden Olympia and the poor immigrant orphanage outside Eden Olympia. One day he goes nuts and shoots a bunch of people. What a crazy aberration! Enter Dr. Jane Sinclair, hired to replace Dr. Greenwood, and her, at loose ends recovering from an injury, pilot husband Paul. They are moved into Dr. Greenwood's former home. Dr. Jane goes to work (she does? she is a paediatrician and there are no kids in Eden Olympia. She doesn't even get to volunteer at the orphanage were Dr. Greenwood worked, as all those "nubile thirteen year old girls" have gone elsewhere) and Paul lounges around the pool wondering about Dr. David Greenwood and his motivations for the murders.
I never hear of anyone ever actually doing any work although there is plenty of talk about the terribly long hours and the need for recreation to satisfy the beast within. No one in Eden Olympia wants to play games with balls. Noooo, here they want to let loose the raging beast. It is all OK because the Doctor in charge of mental health in Eden Olympia prescribes these activities as therapy. In the meantime, Dr. Jane is spending time with her prurient neighbors and her husband is channeling Dr. David Greenwood.
Read it if you want, I don't recommend it.
The author does have a way with words. I was trying to read the book and ignore him at the same time, but he did amuse me sometimes.
"It could be racist, or some mad animal rights thing. Fanatical Greens always veer off-course, and end up trying to save the smallpox virus. On the other hand--"
"Everyone works hard--it proves nothing. People are impressionable, they snatch powerful emotions out of the air. The one thing Eden Olympia doesn't need is its own Green movement. Why doesn't anyone want to save the planet's concrete?"
"I guess it can look after itself."
"Can it?" Penrose turned to stare at me, as if I had conveyed a unique insight.'
David Greenwood was a British doctor working at Eden Olympia. One of those sainted types; loved by everyone, working so hard, giving his all to both the population in Eden Olympia and the poor immigrant orphanage outside Eden Olympia. One day he goes nuts and shoots a bunch of people. What a crazy aberration! Enter Dr. Jane Sinclair, hired to replace Dr. Greenwood, and her, at loose ends recovering from an injury, pilot husband Paul. They are moved into Dr. Greenwood's former home. Dr. Jane goes to work (she does? she is a paediatrician and there are no kids in Eden Olympia. She doesn't even get to volunteer at the orphanage were Dr. Greenwood worked, as all those "nubile thirteen year old girls" have gone elsewhere) and Paul lounges around the pool wondering about Dr. David Greenwood and his motivations for the murders.
I never hear of anyone ever actually doing any work although there is plenty of talk about the terribly long hours and the need for recreation to satisfy the beast within. No one in Eden Olympia wants to play games with balls. Noooo, here they want to let loose the raging beast. It is all OK because the Doctor in charge of mental health in Eden Olympia prescribes these activities as therapy. In the meantime, Dr. Jane is spending time with her prurient neighbors and her husband is channeling Dr. David Greenwood.
Read it if you want, I don't recommend it.
The author does have a way with words. I was trying to read the book and ignore him at the same time, but he did amuse me sometimes.
"It could be racist, or some mad animal rights thing. Fanatical Greens always veer off-course, and end up trying to save the smallpox virus. On the other hand--"
"Everyone works hard--it proves nothing. People are impressionable, they snatch powerful emotions out of the air. The one thing Eden Olympia doesn't need is its own Green movement. Why doesn't anyone want to save the planet's concrete?"
"I guess it can look after itself."
"Can it?" Penrose turned to stare at me, as if I had conveyed a unique insight.'
October 27, 2009
A little slicker than High-Rise, the only other Ballard I've read, and has both strengths and weaknesses because of it. The embrace of the violent and the primal feels a little bit more contextualized here, a little more understandable, but for that it also feels a little less visceral. Part of that might be because Ballard had refined himself as a writer during the intervening years, but the difference might also be intrinsic to the difference in the way the two books approach violence as an inherent element of human nature. High-rise was about the collapse of social cohesion triggered by an automated society in which people don't really need each other any more to secure basic necessities, which in turn leads to a mental regression among individuals into atomization, alienation, territoriality, and the violence that comes from all three.
But Super-Cannes, rather than being about the collapse of organization, both among and within people, is about hyper-organization, a new model for structured living in which even violence and xenophobia are adapted to best serve the demand for lifestyle efficiency among corporate professionals. People can never shed their innate brutality, but they can compartmentalize it for the appropriate outlet in the way that best facilitates their workaholicism the other 90+ percent of the time.
The idea is innately creepy, and made all the moreso by how closely it comports in some ways to existing practices. The Ratissages seem like more honest, and more brutal, expressions of the basic bloodlust that currently drives a lot of sports spectatorship and reality TV. And the selection of Arabs as the "acceptable" targets for the white professionals' attacks - provided of course the Arabs are adequately compensated afterwards for the brutality they endure - feels eerily similar to designating them as a de-facto underclass for service industry jobs. Just like janitors and maintenance men keep the big office parks working, the victims are facilitating more efficient lives for businessmen, who in turn are structuring their own lines according to the exigencies of modern corporate life.
The ending played out exactly as I had expected it to from before I had finished page 50 - and the entire "mystery" of the massacre that drives the plot just left me uninspired - but otherwise, in terms of the basic society Ballard describes it's a provocative read.
But Super-Cannes, rather than being about the collapse of organization, both among and within people, is about hyper-organization, a new model for structured living in which even violence and xenophobia are adapted to best serve the demand for lifestyle efficiency among corporate professionals. People can never shed their innate brutality, but they can compartmentalize it for the appropriate outlet in the way that best facilitates their workaholicism the other 90+ percent of the time.
The idea is innately creepy, and made all the moreso by how closely it comports in some ways to existing practices. The Ratissages seem like more honest, and more brutal, expressions of the basic bloodlust that currently drives a lot of sports spectatorship and reality TV. And the selection of Arabs as the "acceptable" targets for the white professionals' attacks - provided of course the Arabs are adequately compensated afterwards for the brutality they endure - feels eerily similar to designating them as a de-facto underclass for service industry jobs. Just like janitors and maintenance men keep the big office parks working, the victims are facilitating more efficient lives for businessmen, who in turn are structuring their own lines according to the exigencies of modern corporate life.
The ending played out exactly as I had expected it to from before I had finished page 50 - and the entire "mystery" of the massacre that drives the plot just left me uninspired - but otherwise, in terms of the basic society Ballard describes it's a provocative read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 27, 2014
Morte del pensiero greco e vendetta della natura umana. Anni fa, la NASA progett� e costru� un edificio per l'assemblaggio e la custodia protetta di manufatti da inviare nello spazio. Vista la mole tipica dei vettori e navicelle, l'edificio ebbe naturalmente dimensioni e costi colossali ma la sua principale funzione, la protezione, fu assai frustrata: si scopr� che un edificio quantunque totalmente isolato dall'esterno contro pioggia, vento, polveri e altri inquinanti era cos� grande da sviluppare proprie nubi, propria pioggia e pure le proprie polveri e inquinanti. Super-Cannes � la trasposizione sociale di questo concetto. Una societ� che assiste alla morte del pensiero greco dove il pensatore, mantenuto dagli schiavi poteva trascendere le miserie di tutti i giorni per dedicarsi al sapere, cerca di tamponare non restituendo al singolo questo oramai impossibile distacco ma di sostituire al singolo un gruppo e quindi di proteggere questo sperando nella sua propria autonomia. Creano allo scopo un enclave dove una elite di tecnocrati sfugge alle perturbazioni del mondo in un lussuoso bozzolo all'uopo organizzato e mantenuto; nel baluardo dovrebbero entrare le richieste e da l� uscirne solo le soluzioni. Il microcosmo, raggiunto - per rafforzarlo - un certo grado di complessit� produrr� le sue proprie psicosi e squassanti perturbazioni. Sviluppo di un tema gi� iniziato in Cocaine Nights, Ballard qui alza la posta infatti ci� che era sfogo occulto e preordinato, il carnevale postmoderno - che in Cocaine Nights fallisce perch� ancora contiguo al mondo delle persone comuni, si tenta di applicarlo scientemente in un contesto dove gli sperimentatori sono cavie a loro volta. Fallir� perch� le soluzioni che modificano l'ambiente in cui vengono create non possone essere soluzioni stabili. L'ottimismo di B. naturalmente si appoggia sul credo che esista una natura umana e che questa, costituendo una sorta di diritto naturale, sia sempre pi� forte di chi cerca di coercerla. Meriterebbe un terzo tempo dove si cerca di modificare la natura umana prima di reinserirla nel set di questo "grande fratello". James Graham ci stai? ____ Colonna sonora: Alpha - pepper
June 25, 2016
J.G. Ballard's novel Super-Cannes (2000) perversely imagines a world in which the aggrieved and vengeful are the wildly rich, kept by status and success from expressing their more vile and visceral drives. Eden-Olympia, scene of the action, is a futuristic business park on the French Riviera, where the heads of major multinationals are susceptible to stress ailments (infections, swollen joints, inflammations) that can only be resolved, apparently,by indulging in weekend assaults on the immigrant Arab and African servant class in and around Cannes.
Imagine a Hell's Angels with Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and what's his name from Amazon on the lead bikes. Picture them using truncheons on whores and parking lot attendants and trinket venders in order to cleanse their putrified souls. Then drop in an unsuspecting pilot, recovering from a knee operation and married to a young doctor employed by Eden-Olympia, who is hellbent on discovering why certain murders and mayhem have occurred with no explanation why.
That's Super-Cannes scenario and its narrative problem. The scenario is wickedly interesting, but it should not be prosecuted like a mystery story with lots of forced explanations in stilted dialogue. It should be a pastiche of surrealistic conflicts wherein the basest human drives are supercharged by capitalist decadence. Too much is explained here, turning the book from a novel into what Graham Greene called an entertainment. Ballard does not exploit his own sinister talents as a cryptic fabulist. The end result, much praised when the book was published, is tedious even though the underlying idea retains interest.
At some point in the accumulation of wealth and virtual omnipotence, isn't there a moral danger that does in fact lead to the success of one becoming the abuse of others? And is this not plausibly understood as more than a mere byproduct of being a billionaire and an inevitable corruption of character? On what morning can a billionaire wake up in his penthouse or on her yacht and not be utterly detached from everyone else?
Ballard's greatest irony is that the book culminates in a kind of revenge on revenge wherein thanatos meets thanatos, but, again, the book is too talky, an aesthetic disappointment.
Imagine a Hell's Angels with Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and what's his name from Amazon on the lead bikes. Picture them using truncheons on whores and parking lot attendants and trinket venders in order to cleanse their putrified souls. Then drop in an unsuspecting pilot, recovering from a knee operation and married to a young doctor employed by Eden-Olympia, who is hellbent on discovering why certain murders and mayhem have occurred with no explanation why.
That's Super-Cannes scenario and its narrative problem. The scenario is wickedly interesting, but it should not be prosecuted like a mystery story with lots of forced explanations in stilted dialogue. It should be a pastiche of surrealistic conflicts wherein the basest human drives are supercharged by capitalist decadence. Too much is explained here, turning the book from a novel into what Graham Greene called an entertainment. Ballard does not exploit his own sinister talents as a cryptic fabulist. The end result, much praised when the book was published, is tedious even though the underlying idea retains interest.
At some point in the accumulation of wealth and virtual omnipotence, isn't there a moral danger that does in fact lead to the success of one becoming the abuse of others? And is this not plausibly understood as more than a mere byproduct of being a billionaire and an inevitable corruption of character? On what morning can a billionaire wake up in his penthouse or on her yacht and not be utterly detached from everyone else?
Ballard's greatest irony is that the book culminates in a kind of revenge on revenge wherein thanatos meets thanatos, but, again, the book is too talky, an aesthetic disappointment.
June 9, 2019
Can a perfect world exist?
In an exploration of the dangers of capitalism, violence and the essence of being human, Ballard tells the interesting story of Paul, who follows his wife to an ultra-capitalist business park called Eden-Olympia, substituting the infamous David Greenwood, who ended his stay by going on a murder spree and committing suicide. Paul takes on the role of detective, and as the story unfolds and more and more becomes clear about why Greenwood did what he did, a veil of perfection is lifted of Eden-Olympia, revealing its darkest secrets.
The premise, which is absolutely great, initially was what made me take the step from seeing this on goodreads to actually buying it, some 3 or 4 years later. However, it was not the plot-driven spectacle I had imagined: one of its main flaws I would find to be the book's length, and subsequently its pacing in certain areas - here, it was filled with awful details that would make every reader shudder in disturbance, probably giving off the vibe the book was going for, but also making it at times just slow and dark and negative and "Oh, I really don't want to pick this up again". This is a really dark, really disturbing piece of extremely postmodern (I think) fiction, critiquing what we have come to as a world, with all our technology and capitalism, without sounding like an old angry man. Or, else, like an old angry man that could write beautifully: Ballard shapes an atmosphere like very few other, and uses the most eloquent language. However, at times, the dialogue felt a bit disjointed and almost fake, creating a distance between it and the reader, and making the latter disoriented within the story. This might also be why the characters were a bit flat, but I would certainly not think this can be excused: the story was wonderful, but I experienced Ballard's characters to be flat and disengaging.
This is a reading experience like no other, providing many interesting ideas about society and its potential perfection, violence, crime, capitalism, and technology, but also a slow, sometimes boring, and occasionally disengaging one.
In an exploration of the dangers of capitalism, violence and the essence of being human, Ballard tells the interesting story of Paul, who follows his wife to an ultra-capitalist business park called Eden-Olympia, substituting the infamous David Greenwood, who ended his stay by going on a murder spree and committing suicide. Paul takes on the role of detective, and as the story unfolds and more and more becomes clear about why Greenwood did what he did, a veil of perfection is lifted of Eden-Olympia, revealing its darkest secrets.
The premise, which is absolutely great, initially was what made me take the step from seeing this on goodreads to actually buying it, some 3 or 4 years later. However, it was not the plot-driven spectacle I had imagined: one of its main flaws I would find to be the book's length, and subsequently its pacing in certain areas - here, it was filled with awful details that would make every reader shudder in disturbance, probably giving off the vibe the book was going for, but also making it at times just slow and dark and negative and "Oh, I really don't want to pick this up again". This is a really dark, really disturbing piece of extremely postmodern (I think) fiction, critiquing what we have come to as a world, with all our technology and capitalism, without sounding like an old angry man. Or, else, like an old angry man that could write beautifully: Ballard shapes an atmosphere like very few other, and uses the most eloquent language. However, at times, the dialogue felt a bit disjointed and almost fake, creating a distance between it and the reader, and making the latter disoriented within the story. This might also be why the characters were a bit flat, but I would certainly not think this can be excused: the story was wonderful, but I experienced Ballard's characters to be flat and disengaging.
This is a reading experience like no other, providing many interesting ideas about society and its potential perfection, violence, crime, capitalism, and technology, but also a slow, sometimes boring, and occasionally disengaging one.
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