"High-Rise" by J G Ballard

 The forty floor apartment block is socially divided into three zones: the lowers on the bottom ten floors, the middles on floors 11 - 34 and the uppers on floors 35 upwards. When the electrical, air-conditioning, water and garbage systems start failing, the residents confronting one another at the tenth floor swimming pool. Soon, barricades appear and there are fights for control of the elevators. As the behaviour of the residents degenerates, there are murders and raiding parties and battles. The block becomes a "nightmare termitary" (Ch 5)

High-Rise is William Golding's Lord of the Flies in which the protagonists are, at least supposedly, adults. It is in exploration of the tribal urges luring behind the veneer of our civilisation.

The story is told from the viewpoints of three (male) residents: one from the lower floors, one from the middle and one, the architect, from the penthouse. :

• Richard Wilder (us there a clue in the surname?) is the Caliban of the piece, a bull of a man from the lower floors, a representative of the carnal in man's nature. He projects an image of self-confidence, security and good humour but he "needed to be looked after" by his wife. As time passes he becomes more feral, marking his territory with urine, displaying his genitals, and painting his body with blood-coloured lipstick. Part of the plot of the book is the attempt by Wilder to climb to the top floor, an utterly symbolic version of social climbing.
• "He was continually touching himself, for ever inspecting the hair on his massive calves, smelling the backs of his scarred hands, as if he had just discovered his own body." (Ch 1)
• Dr Robert Laing lives on the middle floors.
• "This central two-thirds of the apartment building formed its middle class, made up of self-centred but basically docile members of the professions ... Puritan and self-disciplined, they had all the cohesion of those eager to settle for second-best." (Ch 5)
• Anthony Royal (again, there is a clue in the name) is the architect (so representing God, whose creation is to go spectacularly wrong?) who lives in the penthouse. He is "a puzzling and aloof figure, an automobile-crash casualty in his wheelchair living on the roof of the high-rise in a casual menage with a rich young wife half his age whom he was happy to see taken out by other men. Despite this symbolic emasculation ..." (Ch 7) It would seem that the impotent Sir Clifford Chatterley has stepped (or rather been wheeled) straight out of the pages of Lady Chatterley's Lover, another book about class conflict in which a 'brutish' working class male is pitted against a failing system built by a now-enfeebled upper class man.

The three, carefully chosen, narrators are part of a fascinating exploration of the class system with its wonderfully concretised lower, middle and upper:

• "People in high-rises tended not to care about tenants more than two floors below them." (Ch 1) More litotes.
• "He and his fellow tenants were far more tolerant of any noise or nuisance from the floors above them than they were from the below them." (Ch 1)

The writing:

As with Kafka's novels, it approaches the extraordinary with deadpan prose, writing as if nothing could be more normal than the bizarre events it is describing. This is aided by the use of third person narrators which enables Ballard to maintain a distance from the descriptions, again lending an everyday quality to the surreal. I suppose (but I don't know) that a more emotionally-charged narrative (perhaps adopted in an attempt to enhance the drama) might reduce the verisimilitude. Ballard has endeavoured to adopt the tone of a fly-on-the-wall documentary (perhaps it is no surprise that the 'lower' narrator makes TV documentaries): this is more Lowry than Caravaggio.

The hook: "Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months." (first sentence). This immediately sets the tone: 'unusual events' is classic litotes, an huge euphemistic understatement. The 'later' immediately tells you of the story within a story device. And the next few words are the hook, giving a clue to the 'unusual events' and making one want to know more.

There are some wonderfully original descriptions, metaphors and similes:

• "A film of white dust covered the furniture in the lounge and bedrooms, as if he had returned to the apartment and its three sleepers after an immense period of time had condensed around them like a stone frost." (Ch 6) I love the idea of dust being condensed time, plus I enjoyed the tribute to the (seven) sleepers of Ephesus.
• "The expression of outrage on his face made Crosland resemble an announcer tricked for the first time into reading an item of bad news about himself." (Ch 10) The thing about Crosland, a TV news reader, is that despite being the last person from the high-rise to continue to go to work he keeps secret the breakdown of law and order within the high-rise.
• "The lurid caricatures on the walls glimmered in the torch-light like the priapic figures drawn by the cave-dwellers." (Ch 11) This emphasises that a return to barbarism is symbolised by a male erection; torch-light is a nice touch since a torch can be electric (as in this case) or burning.
• "Inciting each other like wedding guests making themselves drunk in the knowledge that they too will soon be copulating freely among the sweetmeats." (Ch 13)
• "She lay there stunned, like a dishevelled duchess, surprised to find herself drunk at a ball." (Ch 17)

Great moments:

• "He felt for the first time that he was looking down at the sky, rather than up to it." (Ch 1)
• "He was constantly aware of the immense weight of concrete stacked above him." (Ch 4)
• "Living in high-rises required a special type of behaviour, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad." (Ch 5)
• "The carpets in the silent corridors were thick enough to insulate them from hell itself." (Ch 6)
• "She had deliberately surrounded herself with mirrors, as if this replication of herself gave her some kind of security." (Ch 7)
• "Hours on the gymnasium exercycles had equipped them for no more than hours on the gymnasium exercycles." (Ch 12)
• "The insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission." (Ch 12)
• "For all their descent into barbarism, the residents of the high-rise remained faithful to their origins and continued to generate a vast amount of refuse." (Ch 14)
• "One rule in life ... If you can smell garlic everything is all right." (Ch 19)

A wonderful social allegory; barbarities expressed deadpan to add verisimiltude. And a cracking read. September 2020; 253 pages

Other books by Ballard reviewed in this blog include:

• The Unlimited Dream Company In many ways similar to High-Rise, the staid town of Shepperton goes mad and indulges in endless orgies: “My semen splashed the windows of the supermarket, streamed across the sales slogans and price reductions.”
• Millennium People in which the middle-classes revolt: “Being law-abiding has nothing to do with being a good citizen. It means not bothering the police.”
• Cocaine Nights in which trangressive sex and crime transform an expatriate retirement community on the Costa del Sol ... for the better?

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God