His name may recall to you the (anti-)psychiatrist R.D. Ballard tricks us into thinking he’s the protagonist-which I guess he is!-by which I mean audience surrogate, and also typical Ballardian hero (divorced mama issues a drinker). Robert Laing-not really a practicing doctor, no, but he works at a teaching hospital. From the middle-class (and perhaps ego)-the 25th floor-there’s Dr.Ballard structures the book around three anti-heroes, who represent, probably, id, ego, and superego-or rather, what I mean to say is ironic send-ups of id, ego, and superego-with the high-rise itself a kind of consciousness in crisis.He counted on his late-20th-century reader to intuit the whole damn deal (or throw down the book in defensive disgust). And the best part? Ballard dispenses with any sort of explanation whatsoever. So, what is High-Rise about? Like, the plot, man? Class-war in a high-rise condo: A self-contained society that fails, its id overspilling into sex and violence: The veneer dissolved in piss and spite.Degeneration. The boiling pot of late-20th century consciousness. Ballard dispenses with any simmering in his tale of depraved debauchery (or is that debauched depravity?). The first chapter of High-Rise is aptly titled “Critical Mass.” This is a book where things, uh, escalate quickly, if you’ll forgive my indulging in the parlance of our times.Maybe you’ll enjoy all the old High-Rise covers I couldn’t help but to scatter through this riff). (If the promise of that first line doesn’t intrigue you, High-Rise isn’t for you.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. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise-which I hadn’t read since I was a teenager-wrapped me up immediately with its opening sentence: With the bad taste of a recentish YAish post-apocalyptish novel in my brain, I riffled through some old sci-fi titles, hoping to find something to hit “reset.” J.G.

High rise ballard