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Title	:	High-Rise
Author	:	J.G. Ballard
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 208 pages
Published	:	April 16th 2012 by Liveright (first published November 1975)
Categories	:	Fiction. Science Fiction. Dystopia

High-Rise

J.G. Ballard

Paperback | Pages: 208 pages

Rating: 3.61 | 23878 Users | 2196 Reviews

Interpretation Concering Books High-Rise

"A low crime-rate doctor," she told him amiably, "is a sure sign of social deprivation."

Anthony Royal built the Titanic of skyscrapers.



A state of the art, megalithic structure suitable for 2,000 tenants. It is a self-contained environment with everything a tenant would need such as shopping or exercise or even schools for their kids. The people the building attracts are white collar, well educated, professionals. The apartments sell out quickly and as everyone start to settle into their new lives glitches start to occur. Despite the developing problems entire floor parties are standard weekend entertainment. A bottle drops from a higher floor and shatters on Dr. Robert Laing's balcony and it is equivalent to the first canon fired on Fort Sumter.

As the week continues more bottles are dropped and other assorted trash begins to fall from the sky. A rich jeweler plummets from his upper level apartment onto the roof of a car. Resentment is building between levels. The perceived richest people, where Anthony Royal resides, are on the upper levels. The middle level people, where Dr. Robert Laing reside, are resentful of the upper levels, but also becoming more disdainful of the lower levels. Richard Wilder, a man working on a documentary about human behavior, lives in the lower levels. The trash is accumulating on the ground floor, the trash chutes become jammed and more and more trash is being hoisted over the side of the building creating an intolerable situation for the lower tenants.

Electricity winks out leaving entire floors without power for days at a time. "Five floors were without electricity. At night the dark bands stretched across the face of the high-rise like dead strata in a fading brain."The air condition goes out and when it does come back on it only trickles out for a few minutes before failing again. The lower levels bear the worst of the malfunctions with the upper levels remaining relatively unaffected. Resentments build and as tenants become more and more irritated the civilized structure of the building starts to erode.

This is the point of the novel when J.G. Ballard asks the reader to suspend belief. Yes, he is creepy; and yes, he has a pink beach ball; and yes, he wants to play with your mind.



The three levels of the building go to war with each other. People are beaten. Women are raped. Graffiti is sprayed on the walls. The building breaks down into tribal units with lower levels trying to conquer and take over higher levels of the building. "Not for the fist time Laing reflected that he and his neighbors were eager for trouble as the most effective means of enlarging their sex lives.The problem I have is that the outside world is perfectly normal. Civilization is existing just fine. There is no cataclysmic event that has ruptured the natural order of things. To return to the world of order is as simple as leaving the building. These are highly educated people who have benefited greatly from living in a society that allows them to make money using their brains. I found it hard to believe that these people would so easily transition to a tribal warfare society.

"They discussed the latest ruses for obtaining food and women, for defending the upper floors against marauders, their plans for alliance and betrayal. Now the new order had emerged, in which all life within the high-rise revolved around three obsessions-security, food and sex."

This is the adults gone wild version of Lord of the Flies. I didn't like Lord of the Flies so maybe I just don't like books about mob culture. Ballard didn't sell me on this concept, not that I don't believe that intelligent, well educated people are incapable of marinating in the swamp juices of the lizard brain, but I didn't feel it would happen under the circumstances that Ballard presented. I am still curious to explore more in Ballard's world and I look forward to reading more of his work. I'll leave you with some parting thoughts from Doctor Laing.

"Would he soon be the last person alive in the high-rise? He thought of himself in this enormous building, free to roam its floors and concrete galleries, to climb its silent elevator shafts, to sit by himself in turn on every one of its thousand balconies. This dream, longed for since his arrival at the high-rise, suddenly unnerved him, almost as if, at last alone here, he had heard footsteps in the next room and come face to face with himself."

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Define Books Conducive To High-Rise

Original Title:	High-Rise
ISBN:	0871404028 (ISBN13: 9780871404022)
Edition Language:	English URL http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-87140-402-2/
Characters:	Robert Laing, Charlotte Melville, Richard Wilder, Anthony Royal, Helen Wilder, Anne Royal
Setting:	London, England

Rating Containing Books High-Rise

Ratings: 3.61 From 23878 Users | 2196 Reviews

Commentary Containing Books High-Rise

[7/10] High-Rise is not an easy novel to fit into a specific genre. It's not exacly science-fiction because the time frame is contemporary England (cca. 1975). Yet the novel does try to use a scientific approach to the study of human behaviour - psychology. So, I guess you can call it 'soft' SF. You can also call it a dystopian novel, a horror novel or a thriller, but for me the best description is as an adult, x-rated version of "Lord of the Flies" Now the new order had emerged, in which all

"The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation."- JG Ballard, High-Rise I love Ballard. He both attracts and repels me at the same time. No. That isn't quite it. He freaks the hell out of me. His stories and novels are so damn sharp and prescient. 'High-Rise' was written in 1975 (43 years ago!), right after Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), but he seems to GET the psychology of Twitter and Facebook. He gets

"A low crime-rate doctor," she told him amiably, "is a sure sign of social deprivation."Anthony Royal built the Titanic of skyscrapers. A state of the art, megalithic structure suitable for 2,000 tenants. It is a self-contained environment with everything a tenant would need such as shopping or exercise or even schools for their kids. The people the building attracts are white collar, well educated, professionals. The apartments sell out quickly and as everyone start to settle into their new

Alternative title: "THIS is why we can't have nice things"*******************************************************Okay, having collected my thoughts, here are the points I think worth mentioning. *I loved the book. Just fucking LOVED the book. As in, "I will read everything this author ever wrote" loved the book. My first impression was that this is Lord of the Flies for adults. I enjoyed this a lot more than I did Golding's book.From here on out, the whole thing is pretty much one big spoiler.

Oh J.G. Ballard. I just don't think we are meant to be friends.Other than Crash, High-Rise is the only other thing that I have ever been interested in reading by Ballard. I saw the film adaptation with Tom Hiddleston, which I enjoyed (although felt it was a little style over substance), so when I saw that the audiobook was narrated by Hiddleston himself, I decided to try Ballard again in a slightly different form.Hiddleston is a great narrator, and even employs different accents in his reading

In the near future High-Rise buildings tower in the sky with thousands of humans living together uneasily , in cramp modern quarters the unknown dangers will reveal their inadequacies soon enough, the setting London in a former slum, the Thames River flows in a leisurely way a short distance from the five edifices separated hundreds of yards from each . The affluent inhabitants living in this forty stories structure will deteriorate, class warfare hidden just under the surface but always ready

Having read all of his short stories some time ago, Ive finally decided to check out his full length novels. His short stories are famous for being vivid and imaginative, not to mention incredibly prophetic, but let me say that this book is like nothing I've read before (perhaps Saramago emulates in Blindness the mass hysteria of a people left to fend for themselves [or who prefer it that way] in a similar way it has some traces of Lord of the Flies [and Margaret Atwood definitely owes him for