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Kingdom Come
A masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard, which asks could Consumerism turn into fascism?
A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently, but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly) set free without charge.
One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its heart the shining shoppers’ paradise where the shooting happened – the Metro-Centre. Richard, determined to unravel the mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and sports club.
In this, his final novel, Ballard holds up a mirror to Middle England, reflecting an unsettling image of suburbia and revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.
This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ned Beauman, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.
A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently, but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly) set free without charge.
One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its heart the shining shoppers’ paradise where the shooting happened – the Metro-Centre. Richard, determined to unravel the mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and sports club.
In this, his final novel, Ballard holds up a mirror to Middle England, reflecting an unsettling image of suburbia and revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.
This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ned Beauman, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 4, 2006
142 people are currently reading
4520 people want to read
About the author
J.G. Ballard
469 books4,058 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 309 reviews
September 12, 2019
J. G. Ballard's last novel proves to be... problematic. It has all the Ballard tropes we've come to expect (oracular prognostications of the near future, human versus nature versus human melees, oversimplified speech and wacky, token weirdos in secondary roles), but this time their arrangement seems to be glossed over completely, humanity's de-evolution favored (and only favored) by anarchy (In Ballard, the best use of architectural terror occurs in "High-Rise"; ironically, the best love stories occur in "Crash"; and the best use of violence intermingling with beauty can be witnessed in "Empire of the Sun). Not his best by half, it seems at times as complex (though not as entertaining) as the "Planet-errium" episode in South Park.
May 5, 2012
Last night I stayed up late (well, for me) and finished Kingdom Come's last 100 pages. I don't normally stay up late, but I did last night because:
1) I wanted the book to end.
2) I wanted to see how the book ended.
3) I couldn't sleep.
So, while reading the novel's last pages by the light of Nook screen, I decided that I like but don't love this book. Kingdom Come focuses on the transformation of a depressing lower-middle class airport suburb's into a bonkers, riotous state via the raw emptiness and unconscious madness of endless consumerism. One can assume that Ballard did not see hanging on in quiet desperation as the English way; he'd more likely characterize the English way as torched shopping malls, jackbooted football supporters, and the shattered windows of vandalized minority-owned stores.
Kingdom Come revolves around a Londoner's attempts to uncover the details of his father's death in an pparently random mass shooting at the Brooklands Metro-Centre, the imposing, cathedral-like retail mecca that forms the novel's geographical and metaphorical core. Most of the characters' dialogue rings hollow, however, more like setpieces where people talk through the novel's themes without having much of what could be called realistic conversation. The murder plot functions as a vehicle for Ballard to indict and highlight the dark life inherent in industrial suburbs. Kingdom Come is strongest when bathed in details of decay and breakdown. The overarching storyline didn't do much for me. Kingdom Come would make an excellent, expensive film. And I'll continue to read Ballard. This was his final novel, from what I understand, and crackles here and there with strange fire. Good but a football field or so away from great.
1) I wanted the book to end.
2) I wanted to see how the book ended.
3) I couldn't sleep.
So, while reading the novel's last pages by the light of Nook screen, I decided that I like but don't love this book. Kingdom Come focuses on the transformation of a depressing lower-middle class airport suburb's into a bonkers, riotous state via the raw emptiness and unconscious madness of endless consumerism. One can assume that Ballard did not see hanging on in quiet desperation as the English way; he'd more likely characterize the English way as torched shopping malls, jackbooted football supporters, and the shattered windows of vandalized minority-owned stores.
Kingdom Come revolves around a Londoner's attempts to uncover the details of his father's death in an pparently random mass shooting at the Brooklands Metro-Centre, the imposing, cathedral-like retail mecca that forms the novel's geographical and metaphorical core. Most of the characters' dialogue rings hollow, however, more like setpieces where people talk through the novel's themes without having much of what could be called realistic conversation. The murder plot functions as a vehicle for Ballard to indict and highlight the dark life inherent in industrial suburbs. Kingdom Come is strongest when bathed in details of decay and breakdown. The overarching storyline didn't do much for me. Kingdom Come would make an excellent, expensive film. And I'll continue to read Ballard. This was his final novel, from what I understand, and crackles here and there with strange fire. Good but a football field or so away from great.
March 28, 2020
The Suburban Outlands
In “Millennium People", the middle class residents of inner city Chelsea Marina staged a revolution against their enslavement by aspirational consumerism (high mortgage payments, parking and school fees).
In “Kingdom Come", JG Ballard changed his focus to the outer London suburbs/towns, “the suburban outlands", specifically the fictitious motorway town of Brooklands, “the town between Weybridge and Woking that had grown up around the motor-racing circuit of the 1930’s.”
Congregating in the Cathedral of Consumerism
In this, his last, novel, Ballard elaborated more on the process by which the residents are made subjects of consumerism.
There are few traditional high streets in the outlands. Instead, the M25 “drew the population of south-east England towards the Metro-Centre:"
Proud of Their Englishness
A sense of inauthentic community derives from and surrounds the Metro-Centre.
The Metro-Centre management does everything conceivable to attract consumers to its stores, so they can spend money. It sponsors sporting teams and festivals, where the players wear football jerseys emblazoned with the cross of St George.
On the street, supporters behave like football hooligans, attacking Asian shopkeepers and East European immigrants. “Whatever else, the people here were proud of their Englishness...”
Ballard's dystopian vision seems to have diagnosed the racism that later found its home in the Brexit movement.
Conned and Cajoled by the Eternal Retail Present of Consumerism
The narrator is Richard Pearson, who has just lost his job as an advertising executive. Coincidentally, his 75 year old father has been shot dead in the Metro-Centre, and Richard (who lives in a flat in Chelsea Harbour, a “millionnaires' toytown" like Chelsea Marina in “Millennium People") arrives in Brooklands so that he can find out who killed him. Over the course of the novel, he learns not just who, but why. To understand the crime, he must understand its context and setting in Brooklands and the Metro-Centre.
Initially, he “felt a certain pride that [he] had helped to set its values. History and tradition, the slow death by suffocation of an older Britain, played no part in its people's lives. They lived in an eternal retail present...”
Pearson eventually realises that “all malls subtly infantilised us.” The malls are “so many Aladdin's caves, a hundred neon palaces filled with treasure...” The Metro-Centre is a temple, “a house of treasure that enriched the lives of its visitors.”
Ballard/Pearson formulates an astute sociological, psychological and political analysis of contemporary late capitalist England for the purposes of his fiction:
A Moody, Bolshie and Alluring Lady Doctor
Pearson learns that some prominent Brooklands citizens (including the moody, bolshie and alluring Dr. Julia Goodwin) have formed a resistance movement that's opposed to the Metro-Centre and its singular retail culture. These citizens are mostly law enforcement, educational and health professionals. The rest of the movement originates in “the traditional middle class, with their private schools and disdain for the Metro-Centre.” There is “a conflict of recreational cultures, a clash of very different lifestyles.” They yearn for the return of authentic high streets, which have been destroyed by malls and national franchises:
The Willed Insanity of Consumer Fascism
One of the characters, a psychiatrist, describes it as “elective psychopathy...a willed insanity".
The people who enjoy the facilities offered by the Metro-Centre argue that they “depend on the high values and ideals maintained by the mall and its suppliers. Together they probably do a better job of representing your real interests than your Member of Parliament.”
There is a kind of fascism at work here:
A Deeply Sedated Population
The residents of Brooklands have turned into a “deeply sedated population...We’re in the worship phase, when everyone believes and behaves...The whole place is off its rocker.”
And their kind of madness leads inevitably from sedation and boredom to racism and violence.
Who knows whether this is the end of late-stage capitalism, the start of something new, or whether it is just the "eternal retail present"?
SOUNDTRACK:
In “Millennium People", the middle class residents of inner city Chelsea Marina staged a revolution against their enslavement by aspirational consumerism (high mortgage payments, parking and school fees).
In “Kingdom Come", JG Ballard changed his focus to the outer London suburbs/towns, “the suburban outlands", specifically the fictitious motorway town of Brooklands, “the town between Weybridge and Woking that had grown up around the motor-racing circuit of the 1930’s.”
Congregating in the Cathedral of Consumerism
In this, his last, novel, Ballard elaborated more on the process by which the residents are made subjects of consumerism.
There are few traditional high streets in the outlands. Instead, the M25 “drew the population of south-east England towards the Metro-Centre:"
“Dominating the landscape around it, the immense aluminium dome housed the largest shopping mall in Greater London, a cathedral of consumerism whose congregations far exceeded those of the Christian churches...
"There were no cinemas, churches or civic centres, and the endless billboards advertising a glossy consumerism sustained the only cultural life...
“This was a place where it was impossible to borrow a book, attend a concert, say a prayer, consult a parish record or give to charity. In short, the town was an end state of consumerism.”
Proud of Their Englishness
A sense of inauthentic community derives from and surrounds the Metro-Centre.
The Metro-Centre management does everything conceivable to attract consumers to its stores, so they can spend money. It sponsors sporting teams and festivals, where the players wear football jerseys emblazoned with the cross of St George.
On the street, supporters behave like football hooligans, attacking Asian shopkeepers and East European immigrants. “Whatever else, the people here were proud of their Englishness...”
Ballard's dystopian vision seems to have diagnosed the racism that later found its home in the Brexit movement.
Conned and Cajoled by the Eternal Retail Present of Consumerism
The narrator is Richard Pearson, who has just lost his job as an advertising executive. Coincidentally, his 75 year old father has been shot dead in the Metro-Centre, and Richard (who lives in a flat in Chelsea Harbour, a “millionnaires' toytown" like Chelsea Marina in “Millennium People") arrives in Brooklands so that he can find out who killed him. Over the course of the novel, he learns not just who, but why. To understand the crime, he must understand its context and setting in Brooklands and the Metro-Centre.
Initially, he “felt a certain pride that [he] had helped to set its values. History and tradition, the slow death by suffocation of an older Britain, played no part in its people's lives. They lived in an eternal retail present...”
Pearson eventually realises that “all malls subtly infantilised us.” The malls are “so many Aladdin's caves, a hundred neon palaces filled with treasure...” The Metro-Centre is a temple, “a house of treasure that enriched the lives of its visitors.”
Ballard/Pearson formulates an astute sociological, psychological and political analysis of contemporary late capitalist England for the purposes of his fiction:
“Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation...Consumerism asks us to accept the will of the majority. [It] is a new form of mass politics. It's very theatrical, but we like that...
“Consumerism is a redemptive ideology. At its best, it tries to aestheticise violence, though sadly it doesn't always succeed.
“What we want is an aesthetics of violence. We believe in the triumph of feelings over reason. Pure materialism isn't enough...We need drama, we need our emotions manipulated, we want to be conned and cajoled. Consumerism fits the bill exactly. It's drawn the blueprint for the fascist states of the future. If anything, consumerism creates an appetite that can only be satisfied by fascism. Some kind of insanity is the last way forward...
"Consumer fascism may be the only way to hold a society together. To control all that aggression, and channel all those fears and hates...Who knows, the end of late-stage capitalism and the start of something new...?”
“I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger.”
“Every citizen of Brooklands, every resident within sight of the M25, was constantly trading the contents of house and home, replacing the same cars and cameras, the same ceramic hobs and fitted bathrooms. Nothing was being swapped for nothing. Behind this frantic turnover, a gigantic boredom prevailed...Boredom and aimlessness.”
“Wherever sport plays a big part in people's lives you can be sure they're bored witless and just waiting to break up the furniture.”
A Moody, Bolshie and Alluring Lady Doctor
Pearson learns that some prominent Brooklands citizens (including the moody, bolshie and alluring Dr. Julia Goodwin) have formed a resistance movement that's opposed to the Metro-Centre and its singular retail culture. These citizens are mostly law enforcement, educational and health professionals. The rest of the movement originates in “the traditional middle class, with their private schools and disdain for the Metro-Centre.” There is “a conflict of recreational cultures, a clash of very different lifestyles.” They yearn for the return of authentic high streets, which have been destroyed by malls and national franchises:
“Here, around the M25, is where it's really happening. This [retail England] is today's England. Consumerism rules, but people are bored...even though they don't realise it. They're out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along...They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad...
"The motorway towns are violent places...We're talking about collective psychology. The whole area is waiting for trouble...Brooklands is a dangerous and disturbed place. Nasty things are brewing here. All this racism and violence.”
The Willed Insanity of Consumer Fascism
One of the characters, a psychiatrist, describes it as “elective psychopathy...a willed insanity".
The people who enjoy the facilities offered by the Metro-Centre argue that they “depend on the high values and ideals maintained by the mall and its suppliers. Together they probably do a better job of representing your real interests than your Member of Parliament.”
There is a kind of fascism at work here:
“Elective insanity is waiting inside us, ready to come out when we need it...Witch-hunts, auto-da-fes, heretic burnings, the hot poker shoved up the enemy's rear, gibbets along the skyline. Willed madness can infect a housing estate or a whole nation...like Thirties Germany.”
“Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.”
A Deeply Sedated Population
The residents of Brooklands have turned into a “deeply sedated population...We’re in the worship phase, when everyone believes and behaves...The whole place is off its rocker.”
“Consumerism is the greatest device anyone has invented for controlling people...
“They know that madness is the only freedom left to them.”
And their kind of madness leads inevitably from sedation and boredom to racism and violence.
Who knows whether this is the end of late-stage capitalism, the start of something new, or whether it is just the "eternal retail present"?
SOUNDTRACK:
April 20, 2019
Senryu Review:
Mindless violence
as post-commercial future
is Ballard’s swansong
Mindless violence
as post-commercial future
is Ballard’s swansong
April 20, 2009
We lost J.G. Ballard today.
If you've never read him before make sure you pick up one of his books this week so that you can get a taste of one of those rare, truly unique artists.
For the first time in a long time, I am completely baffled by a book. The fourth and last installment of JG Ballard's psychopathology cycle, Kingdom Come, has left me full of questions and my mind racing for answers.
Straight away I wonder what Ballard is saying about psychopathy? Is it the root of human greatness, or is it the stain of human malevolence? Is psychopathy what makes certain people brilliant and action oriented? And if so how can that be a bad thing? Certainly the psychopaths in Kingdom Come are drawn together, which mitigates the seeming unlikelihood of so many people thinking similar things about the world in one place not so unlikely. Paticualrlary when those people share many of the same ideas but no one agrees with any other. This eventually leads to their downfall, but is that downfall a cautionary tale for Ballard or simply the logical end to their story with a wish that it could be otherwise?
And what about fascism? Is Ballard suggesting that fascism is the end "ism" of humanity, or simply the inescapable "ism" that all roads lead to. He sees it as a psychopathic "ism," that much is clear, but is he saying it is necessarily a bad thing? At times he almost seems to be suggesting that a "soft fascism" would be a good thing, or is a good thing. In fact, Ballard seems to be suggesting that we are already deep into a fascism that we simply can't see for being in it. Or are we?
Then there is consumerism, an "ism" bound tight to Ballard's soft fascism. Is consumerism a good thing? Is it necessarily bad? Does it replace our gods? Is that how our religions are making a comeback, by turning their religions into something that can be consumed like any other commodity. Is that the true method of today's politics. Does consumerism define everything we are today? If it does is there any escape? And do we even want to escape?
And violence. Ballard seems to be saying that violence is the only place where humans truly excel, and a necessary part of what makes us human. It also seems to be the key to the full exploration of our senses. So what is Ballard's position on all this? There is a lot of forgiveness for violence in Kingdom Come, an unreal forgiveness, but is Ballard suggesting the key to using violence and allowing it? Or is he condemning violence and showing that forgiveness is a potential path for overcoming violence?
There is a brief interview with Ballard at the back of my edition of Kingdom Come that does nothing to clear up these questions, and that's a good thing. I don't want these questions cleared up. I don't want to be fed with an i.v. tube. I want to remain frustrated and wondering, and I imagine Ballard wants that too.
I am considering using this in class soon, but I know it will meet with great resistance from my students. Most students prefer the answers to be clear. No matter how much healthy debate is raised by this book, and it would conjure a semesters worth of debate, most students would rather not take the trouble. Indeed, I expect very few students to finish reading the book at all. But I may still use it anyway. It's always worth a try.
If you've never read him before make sure you pick up one of his books this week so that you can get a taste of one of those rare, truly unique artists.
For the first time in a long time, I am completely baffled by a book. The fourth and last installment of JG Ballard's psychopathology cycle, Kingdom Come, has left me full of questions and my mind racing for answers.
Straight away I wonder what Ballard is saying about psychopathy? Is it the root of human greatness, or is it the stain of human malevolence? Is psychopathy what makes certain people brilliant and action oriented? And if so how can that be a bad thing? Certainly the psychopaths in Kingdom Come are drawn together, which mitigates the seeming unlikelihood of so many people thinking similar things about the world in one place not so unlikely. Paticualrlary when those people share many of the same ideas but no one agrees with any other. This eventually leads to their downfall, but is that downfall a cautionary tale for Ballard or simply the logical end to their story with a wish that it could be otherwise?
And what about fascism? Is Ballard suggesting that fascism is the end "ism" of humanity, or simply the inescapable "ism" that all roads lead to. He sees it as a psychopathic "ism," that much is clear, but is he saying it is necessarily a bad thing? At times he almost seems to be suggesting that a "soft fascism" would be a good thing, or is a good thing. In fact, Ballard seems to be suggesting that we are already deep into a fascism that we simply can't see for being in it. Or are we?
Then there is consumerism, an "ism" bound tight to Ballard's soft fascism. Is consumerism a good thing? Is it necessarily bad? Does it replace our gods? Is that how our religions are making a comeback, by turning their religions into something that can be consumed like any other commodity. Is that the true method of today's politics. Does consumerism define everything we are today? If it does is there any escape? And do we even want to escape?
And violence. Ballard seems to be saying that violence is the only place where humans truly excel, and a necessary part of what makes us human. It also seems to be the key to the full exploration of our senses. So what is Ballard's position on all this? There is a lot of forgiveness for violence in Kingdom Come, an unreal forgiveness, but is Ballard suggesting the key to using violence and allowing it? Or is he condemning violence and showing that forgiveness is a potential path for overcoming violence?
There is a brief interview with Ballard at the back of my edition of Kingdom Come that does nothing to clear up these questions, and that's a good thing. I don't want these questions cleared up. I don't want to be fed with an i.v. tube. I want to remain frustrated and wondering, and I imagine Ballard wants that too.
I am considering using this in class soon, but I know it will meet with great resistance from my students. Most students prefer the answers to be clear. No matter how much healthy debate is raised by this book, and it would conjure a semesters worth of debate, most students would rather not take the trouble. Indeed, I expect very few students to finish reading the book at all. But I may still use it anyway. It's always worth a try.
November 13, 2023
Así como no quiere la cosa, va Ballard en 2006 y te profetiza el trumpismo y toda la serie de movimientos populistas de extrema derecha que estamos disfrutando estos días, otra cosa no será, pero en el tramo final de su carrera literaria el cerebro le funcionaba a topísimo. En este caso, Ballard trabaja con una idea ya presente en novelas como "El club de la lucha", el de la peña alienada y emasculada por el tedio vital producido por la sociedad de consumo pero llevándoselo a su terreno, el de la psicopatología y la psicogeografía presentes en las dispersas urbanizaciones de clase aspiracional del sur de Londres, entre Woking y Weybridge, equivalentes a los PAUs de los alrededores de Madrid, organizadas en torno a un gigantesco centro comercial en plan pirámide azteca.
Disfrazada de novela negra cuyo mayor aliciente es leer las ballardadas que sueltan los personajes que se entrevistan con el protagonista, se trata de una novela muy de tesis sobre cómo el individualismo extremo, la pérdida del sentimiento de comunidad y la muerte de la espiritualidad, trocada por la única satisfacción de poseer bienes de consumo, vacían a los ciudadanos de tal modo que éstos se vuelcan en la violencia, el tribalismo deportivo, la xenofobia, el fascismo como solución transitoria, y, finalmente, en la locura como única vía de escape para soportar el tedio de la existencia. Un panorama que recuerda algunos clásicos del cineasta Adam Curtis ("The Century of the Self" o "The Power of Nightmares" son quizá los primeros que se vienen a la mente), pero si Curtis es un humanista que aún tiene esperanzas en la raza humana, en esta novela Ballard se revela como un misántropo; a la gente lo que le mola es que le den caña y que le digan lo que tiene que hacer, es muy gracioso y revelador a la vista de ciertos eslóganes de la extrema derecha, como en la novela el concepto "libertad" (esto es, libertad egoísta, en contraposición a libertad responsable), llevado a su extremo es un peligro para las personas y el germen del fascismo. Es más, ahora toca fascismo, pero cuando éste fracase, sólo quedará la locura.
En lo más estrictamente literario quizá le sobran páginas y utiliza ideas estructurales ya empleadas en otras novelas, la parte final es totalmente "Rascacielos" pero en un centro comercial, así como me ha sobrado la escasamente convincente "historia de amor", pero la potencia de sus ideas y la sobriedad formal con la que las vuelca al papel, sin renunciar a esas brillantes metáforas tan propias de su estilo, hacen de la novela una lectura más que interesante.
Disfrazada de novela negra cuyo mayor aliciente es leer las ballardadas que sueltan los personajes que se entrevistan con el protagonista, se trata de una novela muy de tesis sobre cómo el individualismo extremo, la pérdida del sentimiento de comunidad y la muerte de la espiritualidad, trocada por la única satisfacción de poseer bienes de consumo, vacían a los ciudadanos de tal modo que éstos se vuelcan en la violencia, el tribalismo deportivo, la xenofobia, el fascismo como solución transitoria, y, finalmente, en la locura como única vía de escape para soportar el tedio de la existencia. Un panorama que recuerda algunos clásicos del cineasta Adam Curtis ("The Century of the Self" o "The Power of Nightmares" son quizá los primeros que se vienen a la mente), pero si Curtis es un humanista que aún tiene esperanzas en la raza humana, en esta novela Ballard se revela como un misántropo; a la gente lo que le mola es que le den caña y que le digan lo que tiene que hacer, es muy gracioso y revelador a la vista de ciertos eslóganes de la extrema derecha, como en la novela el concepto "libertad" (esto es, libertad egoísta, en contraposición a libertad responsable), llevado a su extremo es un peligro para las personas y el germen del fascismo. Es más, ahora toca fascismo, pero cuando éste fracase, sólo quedará la locura.
En lo más estrictamente literario quizá le sobran páginas y utiliza ideas estructurales ya empleadas en otras novelas, la parte final es totalmente "Rascacielos" pero en un centro comercial, así como me ha sobrado la escasamente convincente "historia de amor", pero la potencia de sus ideas y la sobriedad formal con la que las vuelca al papel, sin renunciar a esas brillantes metáforas tan propias de su estilo, hacen de la novela una lectura más que interesante.
June 11, 2019
Many people have their favourite Ballard period—mine is late! Super-Cannes and this are the best books of his that I've read. He seems to best unify the typically aloof and moneyed nature of his characters with a plot and setting in which their seeming indifference to violence or pleasure fits perfectly.
There is a lot of repetition of the novel's core message, how the vacuousness of consumerist culture drives people insane, has them desiring to latch onto any kind of message, even if the message is no message. I don't know if deliberately or not, but it becomes hypnotic in its repetition, like variations on a theme as it emerges from the mouths of different characters. Somehow sedating and yet extra bleak: it's not like the citizens are unaware of what is happening to them or why—but perhaps they're just letting it happen anyway.
Can easily see how he was a precursor to Will Self and Michel Houellebecq. Lord knows I stan sad white men!!
There is a lot of repetition of the novel's core message, how the vacuousness of consumerist culture drives people insane, has them desiring to latch onto any kind of message, even if the message is no message. I don't know if deliberately or not, but it becomes hypnotic in its repetition, like variations on a theme as it emerges from the mouths of different characters. Somehow sedating and yet extra bleak: it's not like the citizens are unaware of what is happening to them or why—but perhaps they're just letting it happen anyway.
Can easily see how he was a precursor to Will Self and Michel Houellebecq. Lord knows I stan sad white men!!
January 6, 2016
#10 in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIWkw...
Very much Ballardian in that human interactions all feel kinda offbeat and weird; also, the book is basically a philosophical treaty (on how capitalism and consumer society lead to/are a form of fascism) with a story draped all over it.
That said, the story is interesting and thrilling and suites the treaty quite well, and for a book so sure that human beings all suck, it's not too terribly bleak. You might need to be Southern English to get it 100% (I'm pretty sure I missed some nuances here and there).
An interesting and unsettling piece of brain candy and a thrilling novel too. Not the most believable dystopia around, but no dystopia looks believable until it happens.
Very much Ballardian in that human interactions all feel kinda offbeat and weird; also, the book is basically a philosophical treaty (on how capitalism and consumer society lead to/are a form of fascism) with a story draped all over it.
That said, the story is interesting and thrilling and suites the treaty quite well, and for a book so sure that human beings all suck, it's not too terribly bleak. You might need to be Southern English to get it 100% (I'm pretty sure I missed some nuances here and there).
An interesting and unsettling piece of brain candy and a thrilling novel too. Not the most believable dystopia around, but no dystopia looks believable until it happens.
November 21, 2012
My car had problems, so I took the bus. The nearest stop to my destination was at a large shopping mall. I took this book with me, so I found myself sitting in a mall, reading a high moral tale about the insanity and inanity of the group mind that develops among those who pledge allegiance to a shopping center.
Oh, I love this book. It is filled with fine writing, and explosive ideas. I am convinced that if Ballard were alive now, he would take great delight in the Occupy movement and other resistance groups. In these pages, he takes on middle class British values, and smashes the idol of consumerism, which many worship. The plot is straightforward, but it is so exuberant and extravagant in the telling, that the reader immediately becomes immersed in the world of the Brooklands Metro Center.
The main gist of the story is this: an advertising man's father is shot and killed in Metro Center. When the man goes to Brooklands to clear out his father's flat, he discovers that more has been going on there than a single act of random violence. When he stays in town to try to uncover what happened to his father, chaos ensues.
Along with attacking consumerism, Ballard also hunts down racism with a vengeance, pursuing the dire situation in which the Pakistani community finds itself when confronted by roving gangs of football supporters who would have been right at home in Hitler's eisenstadt gruppen. When the footballers move from attacking minorities to attacking people in upper class neighborhoods, class warfare enters the picture as well.
It took a visit to Shanghai for me to get around to reading Ballard. Now that I have begun, I am a committed Ballardian.
Oh, I love this book. It is filled with fine writing, and explosive ideas. I am convinced that if Ballard were alive now, he would take great delight in the Occupy movement and other resistance groups. In these pages, he takes on middle class British values, and smashes the idol of consumerism, which many worship. The plot is straightforward, but it is so exuberant and extravagant in the telling, that the reader immediately becomes immersed in the world of the Brooklands Metro Center.
The main gist of the story is this: an advertising man's father is shot and killed in Metro Center. When the man goes to Brooklands to clear out his father's flat, he discovers that more has been going on there than a single act of random violence. When he stays in town to try to uncover what happened to his father, chaos ensues.
Along with attacking consumerism, Ballard also hunts down racism with a vengeance, pursuing the dire situation in which the Pakistani community finds itself when confronted by roving gangs of football supporters who would have been right at home in Hitler's eisenstadt gruppen. When the footballers move from attacking minorities to attacking people in upper class neighborhoods, class warfare enters the picture as well.
It took a visit to Shanghai for me to get around to reading Ballard. Now that I have begun, I am a committed Ballardian.
October 4, 2018
Familias felices paseando con bolsas de grandes almacenes en la mano. Grupos de amigos uniformados con la camiseta de su equipo, celebrando por la calle un nuevo triunfo. El escaparate apedreado de algún pequeño comercio asiático o hindú. Columnas de humo sobre el barrio inmigrante...
Bienvenidos a Metro-Centre describe el reverso oscuro de una sociedad adicta al consumo y a los espectáculos deportivos, una clase media que ha convertido los centros comerciales y los estadios en lugares de culto, y que poco a poco ha revestido de veracidad un discurso nihilista que llama al alazamiento contra el poder tradicional y los enemigos de este credo neofascista.
Visionaria y alienante, la última novela que publicara Ballard arranca como un thriller policíaco que va degenerando hasta transformarse en delirio demente. Muy interesante la radiografía de temas tan actuales como el rechazo y persecución sistemática a todo lo no occidental, o la nueva política basura de showmen ultraconservadores y populistas que cautivan a unas masas necesitadas de líderes que den sentido a sus vidas vacías. Desde que la leí hay ido creciendo, y me ha sorprendido muy gratamente descubrirme experimentando algún placer cuando me toca pasear por un centro comercial.
Muy recomendable.
Bienvenidos a Metro-Centre describe el reverso oscuro de una sociedad adicta al consumo y a los espectáculos deportivos, una clase media que ha convertido los centros comerciales y los estadios en lugares de culto, y que poco a poco ha revestido de veracidad un discurso nihilista que llama al alazamiento contra el poder tradicional y los enemigos de este credo neofascista.
Visionaria y alienante, la última novela que publicara Ballard arranca como un thriller policíaco que va degenerando hasta transformarse en delirio demente. Muy interesante la radiografía de temas tan actuales como el rechazo y persecución sistemática a todo lo no occidental, o la nueva política basura de showmen ultraconservadores y populistas que cautivan a unas masas necesitadas de líderes que den sentido a sus vidas vacías. Desde que la leí hay ido creciendo, y me ha sorprendido muy gratamente descubrirme experimentando algún placer cuando me toca pasear por un centro comercial.
Muy recomendable.
August 12, 2014
"For some peculiar reason, they call it shopping. But it's really the purest kind of politics."
As a fan of what Europeans call "the novel of ideas" it's not at all strange that I would read and enjoy some of the socially-conscious/committed science fiction authors like Ballard, Ellison, and Dick. Kingdom Come, apparently, was Ballard's very last novel, and while I did not enjoy it nearly as much as his more experimental and challenging works such as Crash or Atrocity Exhibition (novels which inspired so many of the hip, dark musical icons of the 1980s--a group to which I aspired) the novel's chilling and often wickedly funny exploration of suburban shopping malls, sports fandom, and a modern, breakfast television fascism is both thoughtful and entertaining.
As a pretty traditionally-paced and framed narrative, Kingdom Come works to combine the social commentary with a protagonist with whom we might identify and an interesting narrative journey progressing through escalating events that allow the politico-economic satire and criticism to emerge naturally via the story. The reason that I have only clicked 3 instead of 4 or even 5 stars is exactly this tried and true, but not very original form. Ho hum. blah blah blah. The reason that Crash and Atrocity Exhibition are so much better is that they combine radical experimentation in both form and language with radical thought and scathing social commentary. The emotional power of reading a difficult and differently formed text opens one to its radical though and satire so much more than a traditional narrative. Those novels (if you can even call them novels!) really shook me up--in the best way. Kingdom Come amused and pleased at best. It was also a little too long for what it was. Still, there are a lot of uselessly long books being read these days--and I can't imagine that there is much thought at all put into those fantasy romances.
As a fan of what Europeans call "the novel of ideas" it's not at all strange that I would read and enjoy some of the socially-conscious/committed science fiction authors like Ballard, Ellison, and Dick. Kingdom Come, apparently, was Ballard's very last novel, and while I did not enjoy it nearly as much as his more experimental and challenging works such as Crash or Atrocity Exhibition (novels which inspired so many of the hip, dark musical icons of the 1980s--a group to which I aspired) the novel's chilling and often wickedly funny exploration of suburban shopping malls, sports fandom, and a modern, breakfast television fascism is both thoughtful and entertaining.
As a pretty traditionally-paced and framed narrative, Kingdom Come works to combine the social commentary with a protagonist with whom we might identify and an interesting narrative journey progressing through escalating events that allow the politico-economic satire and criticism to emerge naturally via the story. The reason that I have only clicked 3 instead of 4 or even 5 stars is exactly this tried and true, but not very original form. Ho hum. blah blah blah. The reason that Crash and Atrocity Exhibition are so much better is that they combine radical experimentation in both form and language with radical thought and scathing social commentary. The emotional power of reading a difficult and differently formed text opens one to its radical though and satire so much more than a traditional narrative. Those novels (if you can even call them novels!) really shook me up--in the best way. Kingdom Come amused and pleased at best. It was also a little too long for what it was. Still, there are a lot of uselessly long books being read these days--and I can't imagine that there is much thought at all put into those fantasy romances.
September 23, 2011
I enjoyed this at first, but as I went on with it the writing became less plausible, until it just became obvious in every sentence that what Ballard was doing was writing a novel. That may seem like a bizarre criticism, but the story just didn't grab me, nor did any of the characters - one of the names even crops up for another character in Concrete Island, whether in a touch of laziness or forgetfulness I don't know.
The whole thing read like an episode of The Bill trying to be a less profound version of 1984, and I gave up about two-thirds of the way through. As the last novel Ballard wrote, this was probably not the best choice to introduce myself to his work, so I'm willing to give him another chance. Plus my best friend rates him as one of his favourites, so he must have something going for him...
The whole thing read like an episode of The Bill trying to be a less profound version of 1984, and I gave up about two-thirds of the way through. As the last novel Ballard wrote, this was probably not the best choice to introduce myself to his work, so I'm willing to give him another chance. Plus my best friend rates him as one of his favourites, so he must have something going for him...
July 18, 2008
This book was supposed to be a dystopian novel about sports hooliganism turning into the militant branch of "soft fascism" through the subtle prodding of an ad agency and a charismatic closed-circuit shopping channel spokesman; I think we can drop the "dystopian" label (it smacks of fantasy; the tarnished raygun shooting a warning shot into the toxifying atmosphere) - Ballard has extrapolated so keenly, that the whole text seems to be an eventuality, not the see-saw "soft maybe" of prophecy.
Somebody once wrote that the best sci-fi is set five minutes into the future, Kingdom Come takes place about thirty seconds into the future (with touches of deja vu from one minute earlier).
***
I'm amazed. When one of your characters is named Tom Carradine and another is named David Cruise, well, you're just asking for trouble. Luckily, "David Carradine" (a.k.a., in context, Tom Carradine) only made one appearance.
Though, Tom Cruise would be an excellent choice to play washed-up actor turned transgressive media icon David Cruise.
Because, you know, Hollywood is just buying up all the Ballard novels for the Silver Screen Treatment. But, seriously, Christian Bale is the right age now to reprise his Empire of the Sun role in an adaptation of Kindness of Women.
***
A nifty webpage dedicated to the novel: http://metrocentre.wordpress.com/
***
A lifelong slacker moves back to his hometown after the death of a parent and witnesses the dark psychology of the natives played out in organized sporting events.
Sheisse.
Where have I heard that before?
***
Received, and the dictionary definition of remaindered: its an Australian large-print edition.
Some of the chapter titles are classic Ballard: "Towards a Willed Madness", "The Geometry of the Crowd", "'Defend the Dome!'" and "Prayers and Wool-Wash Cycles".
Now, I want to soapbox here. This book has the same title as one of those "Christian fiction" Left Behind books. About the Left Behind series: they're abominations. Why? Because the Bible (their "source") tells me so. Right in The Revelation. In The Revelation 22:18: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.
And what do the Left Behind books do? Add unto the prophecies of The Revelation. I don't rejoice in the fall of my fellow humans, but I will point out that they're falling. Falling. Fallen.
***
On order from Amazon, because Language of Fear was damaged and no replacement was available from the bookseller. Fine by me.
Somebody once wrote that the best sci-fi is set five minutes into the future, Kingdom Come takes place about thirty seconds into the future (with touches of deja vu from one minute earlier).
***
I'm amazed. When one of your characters is named Tom Carradine and another is named David Cruise, well, you're just asking for trouble. Luckily, "David Carradine" (a.k.a., in context, Tom Carradine) only made one appearance.
Though, Tom Cruise would be an excellent choice to play washed-up actor turned transgressive media icon David Cruise.
Because, you know, Hollywood is just buying up all the Ballard novels for the Silver Screen Treatment. But, seriously, Christian Bale is the right age now to reprise his Empire of the Sun role in an adaptation of Kindness of Women.
***
A nifty webpage dedicated to the novel: http://metrocentre.wordpress.com/
***
A lifelong slacker moves back to his hometown after the death of a parent and witnesses the dark psychology of the natives played out in organized sporting events.
Sheisse.
Where have I heard that before?
***
Received, and the dictionary definition of remaindered: its an Australian large-print edition.
Some of the chapter titles are classic Ballard: "Towards a Willed Madness", "The Geometry of the Crowd", "'Defend the Dome!'" and "Prayers and Wool-Wash Cycles".
Now, I want to soapbox here. This book has the same title as one of those "Christian fiction" Left Behind books. About the Left Behind series: they're abominations. Why? Because the Bible (their "source") tells me so. Right in The Revelation. In The Revelation 22:18: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.
And what do the Left Behind books do? Add unto the prophecies of The Revelation. I don't rejoice in the fall of my fellow humans, but I will point out that they're falling. Falling. Fallen.
***
On order from Amazon, because Language of Fear was damaged and no replacement was available from the bookseller. Fine by me.
January 5, 2009
The plot is really good but unfortunately it is very repetitive...which may be on purpose to up the anxiety levels even more, but for me it would've been more effective as a shorter story.
It's pretty much about a shopping complex built off of the M5 motorway in London. The people of the town see "The Metro Centre" as the place where all their problems are solved (pretty much because you can buy a whole bunch of useless crap there)..sound familiar? I think that's why I didn't like this book much..sometimes you just want to forget that there are people out there buying home improvement gear in huge complexes for hours at a time or that (and this I witnessed yesterday) the totally irrational practice of buying heaps of calendars with dogs on them is a popular practice in the new year...I'm having an anxiety attack as I write this.
It's pretty much about a shopping complex built off of the M5 motorway in London. The people of the town see "The Metro Centre" as the place where all their problems are solved (pretty much because you can buy a whole bunch of useless crap there)..sound familiar? I think that's why I didn't like this book much..sometimes you just want to forget that there are people out there buying home improvement gear in huge complexes for hours at a time or that (and this I witnessed yesterday) the totally irrational practice of buying heaps of calendars with dogs on them is a popular practice in the new year...I'm having an anxiety attack as I write this.
July 18, 2018
For some reason I had always held off on later Ballard, but this premise was just too great to ignore. A shopping mall that breeds off of fascism. It's a pretty excellent story, told in a familiar detective style way that Ballard is famous for. Coming off of the uneven "Concrete Island", "Kingdom Come" is way more taught, the characters had more direction and definition and the protagonist shifts towards a collaborator. In that way it reminds me of "Supper Cannes", anyway if you've put it off like I did, don't. It has these incredibly prescient moments that really resonate dealing with the nexus of violence, mob mentality, racism, and consumerism that even though it is explicitly about England it feels like it could be the come down of a Trump rally.
April 15, 2017
The suburbs are lame. That, I suppose, is the bare minimum of a premise for this book. Add in the fact that sporting events are often associated with hooliganism and proto-fascist, xenophobic behavior. Finally, concede the point that consumerism has strangled the life out of humanity after first dragging us to our basest level of moral ground. When you have acknowledged and laid out this trifecta of bleakness on the mental table in front of you, consider whether you would want to read a novel that, in an excruciating and mind-numbingly slow manner, systematically bludgeons you over the head with these facts over and over again.
Unfortunately Ballard's final novel is far from being his crowning achievement. To begin with, it is overwritten. I found this to be surprising given the other two novels of his I've now read, each of which provided just enough detail for me to envision the unique world Ballard had dreamed up. In this book there is none of the outlandish spontaneity I had perhaps too soon come to expect from Ballard's writing. The novel is so carefully written, overflowing with the most superfluous detail, that I almost gagged on the word-lava flowing from this smoldering expository volcano. Perhaps my reaction would have been different if the flow was leading somewhere intriguing. It was not. Instead it was inching along in ever-widening circles, led by a dull, gelatinous narrator and flanked by a cast of cardboard characters, none of whom I ever came to care a whit about.
Being new to Ballard's work, I'm now not sure what to expect from the many other works this prolific writer cranked out during his illustrious career (suggestions from diehard Ballard fans are welcome—I'd prefer to move forward from this point having already separated the wheat from the chaff). From reading Goodreads reviews, I've observed that he is quite a divisive figure among amateur literary critics. Maybe he is hit or miss. Certainly this one is a clear miss. It's just too bad he had to go out on a low wave.
(I will say that Ballard shows prescience here in his twisted vision of the rise of authoritarian-flavored neo-populism. It's probably for the best that he bowed out before having to watch his own fiction basically become a reality in certain parts of the world.)
July 13, 2012
Heavy handed indictment of consumerism, capitalism and the rise of the suburbs and the particular racism and prejudices associated with them. Some good points but Ballard really beats you over the head with them ... except when he's being very obscure. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition also was a scathing commentary on marketing and capitalism but far more eloquent and captivatingly written. Kingdom Come did make me think about suburban violence and the effects of boredom and consumer culture combined, but it wasn't a fresh or new perspective, more a gathering of several satellite ideas into one place.
October 26, 2020
It’s been too long since I was last edified-slash-terrified by Ballard’s idiosyncratic “psy-fi.” In the early ‘00s I was sure the skeleton key to the riddles of American existence could be confabulated by some combination of Ballard, Benjamin, Debord, Virilio, and film theory (so: nothing American). Maybe it can but the moment and components have slipped away. Now, in the era of maga militias the specter of racist mob violence not exactly orchestrated but explicitly appreciated by a leather-tanned dogwhistling celebrity-in-chief is daily news. Kinda makes reading “near-future dystopian fiction” a bit uncanny. Ballard, book after desperate please-notice-the-obvious book, was the Orwell for the Age of Spectacle.
“How to rouse a dormant people who had everything, who had bought the dreams that money can buy and knew they had found a bargain?”
There could be more anti-capitalist bias and that’d be fine with me, but I found this novel (and maybe even the older ones overdue for a reread) less didactic and more immersed in the bewildering slipstream of consumerist volatility. The narrator’s reliability is compromised by megadoses of cynicism, duplicity, and howling cognitive dissonance. Every character speaks with the eloquence, patience, and forthright connivance of a Bond villain mainlining cTheory and Situationism; no One speaks The Truth, everyone is unmoored in the postmodern manifold. Some of them just so happen to be ideologically benighted white collar accelerationists fomenting ethnic cleansing as a populist cover operation while they take back their box-hedged bike-laned streets. So the plot is indeed thick, one is never quite sure if a move is a blunder or a trap, or whether death from above is betrayal, comeuppance, martyrdom, collateral damage, or blind chance. The fog of mercantile mysticism is impenetrable, and it probably smells like pumpkin spice.
“How to rouse a dormant people who had everything, who had bought the dreams that money can buy and knew they had found a bargain?”
There could be more anti-capitalist bias and that’d be fine with me, but I found this novel (and maybe even the older ones overdue for a reread) less didactic and more immersed in the bewildering slipstream of consumerist volatility. The narrator’s reliability is compromised by megadoses of cynicism, duplicity, and howling cognitive dissonance. Every character speaks with the eloquence, patience, and forthright connivance of a Bond villain mainlining cTheory and Situationism; no One speaks The Truth, everyone is unmoored in the postmodern manifold. Some of them just so happen to be ideologically benighted white collar accelerationists fomenting ethnic cleansing as a populist cover operation while they take back their box-hedged bike-laned streets. So the plot is indeed thick, one is never quite sure if a move is a blunder or a trap, or whether death from above is betrayal, comeuppance, martyrdom, collateral damage, or blind chance. The fog of mercantile mysticism is impenetrable, and it probably smells like pumpkin spice.
August 30, 2007
Others have written that Ballard’s novels are not in fact novels, but social theory that happens to be put in novel form. They are to be read not for plot, character or plausibility, but to see how Ballard identifies trends and brings them together in imaginative ways to provoke and disturb the reader. The trends in Kingdom Come’s version of contemporary England are consumerism, anti-immigrant violence, and sport fanaticism, which come together in small towns in the home counties to form what Ballard calls a ‘soft fascism’. But plausibility matters here; if you don’t agree the trends Ballard identifies are actually present in this part of England, then it’s hard to believe in his analysis and follow the novel. For instance, Ballard depicts a Surrey in which hordes of ‘sports fans’ from ice hockey clubs have been marauding in red and white England shirts smashing up Asian shops for over a year. This violence is ignored by the police and local media, and so the rest of the country doesn’t come to know what is happening, including just across the M25 in London. Perhaps I’m naïve but didn’t people of every ethnicity wear England shirts during the great 2006 World Cup St. George flag moment, and not just for defensive I-don’t-want-to-stand-out reasons? And how could routine mob violence be contained and kept secret when such incidents are caught on mobile phone or CCTV, instantly disseminated and picked up by national media? The soft fascism of the home counties could not be kept secret. By focusing on a few trends to the exclusion of others, it is as if Ballard is creating the dystopia he thinks we should be concerned about. Anyone could do this. The Daily Mail does it every day.
I also wonder whether much more can be gained from presenting every social problem as a first step towards a descent into fascism. While not denying that fascism is something ‘civilised’ states could embrace, might the resort to fascism as narrative end-state not also be a little sensationalist and prohibit thinking about alternative states we might ‘descend’ into? It is interesting Ballard gives a cover endorsement for John Gray's Black Mass, which argues the US has slipped into fascism under a neoconservative/evangelical alliance. Is fascism the name we give when democracy delivers governments we don't like? We could try to agree on features of a fascist regime, e.g. state/oligarchal control of media, patriotism, militarism, overcoming perceived humiliation by outsiders, etc. Admittedly some of these are present in Ballard's imaginary home counties. But I couldn't help thinking of Rick in The Young Ones, the stereotypical student calling anyone telling him what to do a "fascist".
Loses a star because the book jacket cracked and fell apart within ten minutes of picking it up. Maybe Waterstones has been storing its stock in flooded warehouses. Shabby.
I also wonder whether much more can be gained from presenting every social problem as a first step towards a descent into fascism. While not denying that fascism is something ‘civilised’ states could embrace, might the resort to fascism as narrative end-state not also be a little sensationalist and prohibit thinking about alternative states we might ‘descend’ into? It is interesting Ballard gives a cover endorsement for John Gray's Black Mass, which argues the US has slipped into fascism under a neoconservative/evangelical alliance. Is fascism the name we give when democracy delivers governments we don't like? We could try to agree on features of a fascist regime, e.g. state/oligarchal control of media, patriotism, militarism, overcoming perceived humiliation by outsiders, etc. Admittedly some of these are present in Ballard's imaginary home counties. But I couldn't help thinking of Rick in The Young Ones, the stereotypical student calling anyone telling him what to do a "fascist".
Loses a star because the book jacket cracked and fell apart within ten minutes of picking it up. Maybe Waterstones has been storing its stock in flooded warehouses. Shabby.
May 19, 2024
“The M25, these motorway towns. They’re damned strange places. Nothing is what it seems.”
Apparently this was the last novel he wrote. It feels like eons since I last read Ballard, but seeing that I had quite a number of his old paperbacks lying around, I thought I was long overdue for a catch-up read with him.
“Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger.”
I read quite a bit of Ballard back in the day, but I have to say I don’t remember it being as good as this was, this was real quality, especially at the start, though to be fair it did kind of lose its way, it certainly lost me along the way as it descended into a bit of a eh?...eh?...a confusing and chaotic finale?... But nevertheless this was a pleasure to read.
“We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.”
I’m not sure that there’s many if any authors out there who can make the English suburbs throb with such tension and menace. From the opening lines Ballard shows off some lovely writing, crisp, vibrant passages of cold steel seethe with unease, creating landscapes of bleak vacancy, with people sleepwalking through empty consumerism and drifting towards aimless aspiration.
“Consumerism is the greatest device anyone has invented for controlling people.”
Using his laser sharp observation, and at times with beautiful line after beautiful we see how blurred the lines between consumption and fascism become, and I’m sure I’m far from the first or the last person who’ll read this and find the glaring prophetic elements, which those media and political critics seem to adore so much about anticipating Trump and Brexit blah blah blah, but there's certainly a lot in here and overall there's much quality, even if I was a bit confused and disappointed towards the end. Oh and the PS section at the end is good value as ever too and a nice way to close and tie up the book.
“Look at the most religious area of the world at present – the Middle East and the United States. These are sick societies, and they’re going to get sicker. People are never more dangerous than when they have nothing left to believe in except God.”
May 28, 2018
I can always count on Ballard! 4.5
October 27, 2013
I have no idea what this is really supposed to be. I know, from reading the description of the book on the dust jacket, that it's supposed to be some type of dystopian warning from the near future. What it really seems to be is a tone deaf attempt to turn some vague idea into a novel-length story that could have maybe been a decent but quickly forgotten short. Perhaps one of the most annoying things about it is that there is SO much damn repetition. I wish I would have counted the references to St. George's shirts (which, apparently in the book, symbolize FASCISM because HE TELLS US OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN). Nobody behaves like an actual human being would behave unless they were doped up on quaaludes. Most of the conversations involve heavy overuse of ellipses and it's hard to tell if the intent was to create a loose dreamy feel or a type of vague suspense, when really it's just annoying and makes for occasional confusion with trying to accurately read the dialogue.
THEME? Don't fall in love with a shopping mall.
THEME? Don't fall in love with a shopping mall.
July 21, 2017
This book is very prescient. It predicts Donald Trump. Pretty amazing! It's plot is simple and slow, but I mean heck it plainly shows the rise of suburban fascism in 2008. Worth reading for that alone.
September 30, 2018
No actually it is quite dull despite my initial reaction being a little too quick
September 12, 2022
Mystery - thriller but also weird- philosophical - from capitalism to a form of fascism with a story of many characters & twist/turns - just "had too" finish the book to see how it would all end!!!!
July 26, 2012
I have often wondered if it would be possible, given the state of the world, to develop a sustainable economy NOT based on consumerism. A consumer economy has no real substance; it's all smoke and mirrors. It's small-minded and mean. It uses up and doesn't give back or replace or renew. It is, ultimately, unsatisfying, even wearying; there's no point. As the saying goes, there's no "there" there.
Ballard's world sits eerily and uneasily on this real local, national, and global state. Ominous from the beginning, he follows a suburban implosion focused on a huge shopping mall, the Metro-Centre. The characters slip constantly between the good, the bad, and the ugly. Events and crowds have an uncontrolled and anarchic life of their own. "Together we were a collection of the ill-equipped and the unsaved" as the narrator, Pearson, observes. Reality and truth are impossible to define or know.
As Ballard's characters navigate and attempt to influence this world which is so close to the one we inhabit, their comments can cut uncomfortably close: "Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honestly and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth."
Ouch.
And he sums up this American presidential election beautifully: "Insist on faith and emotional commitment without exactly telling them what they're supposed to believe in. That's new politics."
The plot moves at a crisp pace, with surprising twists and turns to keep things interesting. My only complaint is that the ends get tied up too easily and nicely. This is not a pleasant world, and things don't work out. Ambiguity and, well, distress, seem more appropriate to the basic narrative of this book, rather than semi-happiness.
This world's uncomfortable parallels do stick in the mind. IS there a viable alternative to the Church of Capital Consumerism?
Ballard's world sits eerily and uneasily on this real local, national, and global state. Ominous from the beginning, he follows a suburban implosion focused on a huge shopping mall, the Metro-Centre. The characters slip constantly between the good, the bad, and the ugly. Events and crowds have an uncontrolled and anarchic life of their own. "Together we were a collection of the ill-equipped and the unsaved" as the narrator, Pearson, observes. Reality and truth are impossible to define or know.
As Ballard's characters navigate and attempt to influence this world which is so close to the one we inhabit, their comments can cut uncomfortably close: "Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honestly and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth."
Ouch.
And he sums up this American presidential election beautifully: "Insist on faith and emotional commitment without exactly telling them what they're supposed to believe in. That's new politics."
The plot moves at a crisp pace, with surprising twists and turns to keep things interesting. My only complaint is that the ends get tied up too easily and nicely. This is not a pleasant world, and things don't work out. Ambiguity and, well, distress, seem more appropriate to the basic narrative of this book, rather than semi-happiness.
This world's uncomfortable parallels do stick in the mind. IS there a viable alternative to the Church of Capital Consumerism?
February 15, 2018
This novel from 2006 is even more relevant in 2018. It might not be Ballard’s finest, but as his last novel it is a fitting testament to what he has said before. Like his other forays into the future the style of writing is dated and sometimes clumsy but the content is well ahead of its time. The journey here is into the psyche of suburban Britain. Everything has come to bear; the World is now controlled by the Amazons, Facebooks and googles and we are firmly in the non truth era. Governments exist for their own benefit, retailers to make money, it matters not what they sell, and banks to parasitically devour their customers. Everyone is brainwashed to a greater or lesser degree and are participants as well as victims of the grand scheme...Shopping malls are the new cathedrals, consumers the new worshippers and football teams the tribal training grounds...every aspect of our lives in manipulated and we have entered the shopping mall end game siege. The conditions are ripe for fascism, military rule and a totalitarian state...As Ballard says in the novel: “...violence and hate, as always, were organising themselves”. The frightening thing is that as I write this I forget if I am writing about life in Britain today or the novel, there is little difference between the two. To read this book is to fleetingly go behind the stage set of the World we live in, to see the props and special effect lighting and the mystified audience, where, if you look carefully, you will see yourself sitting and looking on...
June 21, 2020
Pár pasáží je na 4 hvězdičky, zbytek knihy je snadno předvídatelný a hlavně nudný.
Přesto mě pobavilo.
1) Autor, nebo jeho tvůrčí alter ego, na tom moc nesejde, má rád velká nákupní centra ještě méně než já. Asi taky udělal nemilou zkušenost, že na P+R parkovišti integrovaném přímo do centra bez varování omezili provozní dobu a zrekonstruované hogo fogo hajzly jsou pro plebs, který přijede brzy ráno, zavřené, protože slušný konzument močí v OC až od 10 hodin.
2) Fanoušci kontaktních sportů autorovi přijdou jako protofašističtí idioti. Hele, to říkám už dlouho!
3) O hodnotách vyznávaných všeholidem, který kvůli nové LCD televizi, na které sleduje další sobě podobné imbecily v různých kašírovaných estrádách a reality show, upíše svůj život exekutorovi a vydyndá akontaci z babky na konci konzumerského života v důchoďáku, také nemá autor žádné iluze.
Zájemce ještě varuji, že kniha používá na Kindlu podivný a špatně čitelný font, který není možné změnit. A v knize je spousta chyb, včetně zcela vynechaných slov. Přišlo mi, že eknihu nakladatel vytvořil z verze před korekturou.
Přesto mě pobavilo.
1) Autor, nebo jeho tvůrčí alter ego, na tom moc nesejde, má rád velká nákupní centra ještě méně než já. Asi taky udělal nemilou zkušenost, že na P+R parkovišti integrovaném přímo do centra bez varování omezili provozní dobu a zrekonstruované hogo fogo hajzly jsou pro plebs, který přijede brzy ráno, zavřené, protože slušný konzument močí v OC až od 10 hodin.
2) Fanoušci kontaktních sportů autorovi přijdou jako protofašističtí idioti. Hele, to říkám už dlouho!
3) O hodnotách vyznávaných všeholidem, který kvůli nové LCD televizi, na které sleduje další sobě podobné imbecily v různých kašírovaných estrádách a reality show, upíše svůj život exekutorovi a vydyndá akontaci z babky na konci konzumerského života v důchoďáku, také nemá autor žádné iluze.
Zájemce ještě varuji, že kniha používá na Kindlu podivný a špatně čitelný font, který není možné změnit. A v knize je spousta chyb, včetně zcela vynechaných slov. Přišlo mi, že eknihu nakladatel vytvořil z verze před korekturou.
July 3, 2009
Explores similar themes to Millenium People, though in this instance instead of destroying all of their material goods, the characters inhabiting this book are elevating them as idols to be worshipped.
In the suburbs along the M5, a new kind of community is forming. Centred around the Brooklands Metro Centre, a deeply bored people wholeheartedly embrace the ideologies of consumerism and sports, but the emptiness of capitalism and the tribal aspects of the sporting teams are breeding a nasty undercurrent of racial violence, largely encouraged by the authorities. Into this steps Richard Pearson, ad-man...
A surreal and yet scarily believable social prediction, it's easy to see this coming soon, to a shopping mall near you.
In the suburbs along the M5, a new kind of community is forming. Centred around the Brooklands Metro Centre, a deeply bored people wholeheartedly embrace the ideologies of consumerism and sports, but the emptiness of capitalism and the tribal aspects of the sporting teams are breeding a nasty undercurrent of racial violence, largely encouraged by the authorities. Into this steps Richard Pearson, ad-man...
A surreal and yet scarily believable social prediction, it's easy to see this coming soon, to a shopping mall near you.
February 3, 2015
I'm going to divide Ballard's stuff into two category's. The Surrealist experiments and his Novels-of-Ideas. In the first category: The Unlimited Dream Company and The Drought. And in the second: Cocaine Nights, and this little gem. Its the latter category that holds my true affection, though the surrealist stuff is by no means to be ignored. The primary ideas featured here are Fascism and Consumerism, Ballard brings them together in his imaginative laboratory and carefully details the ensuing interactions. Its fascinating stuff, but like all laboratory experiments, carefully contrived and somewhat unnaturally distilled from nature. Still, like i say, fascinating stuff and well worth the read.
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