Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: Although it has some lovely queasy undertones and a very workable premise, I found myself a intermittently bored with Super-Cannes after the 50 page mark. This is the first book by JG Ballard that I've read, and it pleased me enough to want to seek out others, but I think his choices for certain plot developments, rather reductive characterizations, and of often laughably pulpy dialogue* were poorly made, and if it wern't for his reputation, slightly greater literacy and the interesting plot, I would just have soon read some supermarket "thriller", like another (terrible) Dan Brown book.*i.e. "...an affable and fleshy Franco-Lebanese, he stood behind his desk, camel hair coat over his shoulders, more public relations man than security chief. Crime might be absent from Eden-Olympia, but other pleasures were closer to hand."
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: Although it has some lovely queasy undertones and a very workable premise, I found myself a intermittently bored with Super-Cannes after the 50 page mark. This is the first book by JG Ballard that I've read, and it pleased me enough to want to seek out others, but I think his choices for certain plot developments, rather reductive characterizations, and of often laughably pulpy dialogue* were poorly made, and if it wern't for his reputation, slightly greater literacy and the interesting plot, I would just have soon read some supermarket "thriller", like another (terrible) Dan Brown book. *i.e. "...an affable and fleshy Franco-Lebanese, he stood behind his desk, camel hair coat over his shoulders, more public relations man than security chief. Crime might be absent from Eden-Olympia, but other pleasures were closer to hand."
Rating: 
Summary: Tech Park Dystopia
Review: Ballard's latest offering is a murder mystery set in the high tech perfection of Europe's premier silicon valley. A young couple, Paul and Jane Sinclair, leave London for blue chip promises in France's newest tech park, Eden Olympia in the Cote d'Azur. It soon becomes apparent that all is not as it seems
in this tranquil, modern utopia. Crippled aviator, Paul finds himself drawn to investigate a murder spree by Jane's predeccesor, Dr David Greenfield. As he retraces the steps of the murders, and interacts with the various characters peopling the park, the dream perfection that is Eden Olympia takes on nightmarish proportions, unveiling an underbelly of sex and violence spiralling out of control. Although the book reads like a pacy noir thriller, sustaining the reader's attention throughout, it's real appeal lies in its surrealist vision .Ballard's genius lies in his concept of a 21st century dystopia, borne of the culture of consumption but unable to be sustained by it. In his paranoid vision of humanity, psychopathic violence becomes the key that keeps the wheels of perfection turning. This is the 1984 meets A Clockwork Orange of the 21st century, a Darwinian Lord of the Flies set in a Silicon valley so perfect that its executives dine rather than binge.Excellent reading and excellent food for thought.
Rating:
Summary: The wayward Sun
Review: In a continuation of the theme he explored in Cocaine Nights, as well as other works, author J.G. Ballard pens a mystery about a cloistered, high-tech community coming to terms with its need for recreational sociopathology. Eden-Olympia is an ultra modern business park and insular community nestled uncomfortably among the olive groves and marinas of the Cote d'Azure and where recently a respected young doctor embarked on a vicious killing spree. New residents soon find they have little time for anything but work and begin showing mental and physical problems that threaten to overtake the would be corporate paradise. In classic ballardian form, rogue psychiatrist Wilder Penrose steps in and implements a regime in which workaholic CEO's, presidents and junior vp's are encouraged to sublimate their fantasies of criminality, sexuality and violence by taking part in "therapy sessions" of a most uncoventional type. While investigating the bizarre murder-suicide of the former doctor, protagonist Paul Sinclair soon finds himself drawn deeply into this ferment of bright modernity and dark venality. While not on a level with some of his other work; (and his best work is awesome) and although his characters are rather remote, (as usual) Super-Cannes is still an invigorating book. Ballard's mythologizing of crashed airplanes...abandoned runways...car parks... swimming pools...and other totems of our time forms one of the more exotic contributions to literature, yet it works. A strangely lit poetry suffuses his novels, short stories and essays; and one can always count on him for an an unexpected vista. His relentless probing of the social/technological interface has yielded some unsettling prophecies. Super-Cannes is basically a parable about the future; and as Ballard views it, the future is now.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine thriller though possibly not Ballard's best
Review: J. G. Ballard's latest novel, the critically acclaimed "Super-Cannes", is a futuristic thriller set in a high-tech business park somewhere in Cannes, where the eerie hum of economic activity within the cloistered confines of offices and laboratories substitute for real human contact. The novel's protagonist and narrator, Dr Paul Sinclair and his wife Jane, arrive in Cannes and are immediately checked into the house formerly occupied by Jane's ex-colleague from England, David Greenwood, who shocked the township when he went on a murderous rampage one morning, killing several of his colleagues before turning the gun on himself. So, unlike a typical murder mystery, we know who did it. The question is why ? Incapacitated by a bad leg from a flying accident, Paul sets about investigating the incident while his wife disappears like clockwork into the shining concrete jungle every morning. The first half of the novel ticks like a detective story, focussing on Paul's sleuthing as he retraces the events of that fateful morning. Nothing unusual so far except for creepy new age characters like the chief psychiatrist, Wilder Penrose security guard, Frank Halder. Nevertheless, there is a mounting sense of disquiet as the story progresses. Notice you never actually see Jane or anybody else at work. In fact, the only people you meet are neighbours and others relevant to Paul's investigation. Then something completely unexpected happens and you feel as if you're in another story. Hints of weird goings-on (eg, racial violence, gang busts, etc) and drug addiction start to surface and when this coincides with Jane's growing estrangement from her husband, you know there's an external force at work and it's to do with powerful occupants of the tech park. That's when you feel you may be hallucinating or have wandered into a Ballardian science fiction novel by mistake. Unfortunately, that's also when the plot begins to feel a little contrived. Super-Cannes is a real page turner. No doubt about it. As a thriller, it succeeds well enough but its vision of a work obsessed society with the all the attendant value perversions that accompany it is, though frightening, not particularly illuminating. Super-Cannes may not be Ballard's best work but it's highly entertaining and definitely worth your time reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: OLD MASTER GETTING TIRED
Review: JG Ballard is a brilliant old man pushing hard to stay on the cutting edge, and you can feel him pushing here. It's a great concept for an intriguing and relevant novel, and ultimately it's not a bad book, but it lacks the vitality that's so essential to Ballard's best writing.
Rating:
Summary: Open Your Eyes
Review: Let there be no question about it: J.G. Ballard is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tout court. SUPER CANNES confirms this. The profundity and eloquence of his work is equal to that of Kafka, Joyce, Breton, and Blanchot---in other words, to the work of the greatest literary artists of European modernity. DO NOT compare Ballard with that illiterate known as "Chuck Palahniuk": the difference between the two authors is infinite. The narrative of FIGHT CLUB was indeed lifted directly, and crudely, from Ballard's CRASH. But to say that Ballard took ANYTHING from "Palahniuk" is not merely an anachronism and a sign of ignorance---it is an insult to Ballard's genius. I will not comment on the comparison made between Ballard and the director of THE FOG. Certain remarks are not worthy of rejoinder.
Rating:
Summary: The John Carpenter of English literature
Review: Like Carpenter, Ballard suffers from poor execution of some good ideas. John Carpenter may or may not have been a good director once (depending on your point of view), but for the past 20 years he has consistently put out movies where the premise looks engaging on paper (Prince of Darkness, They Live, etc.), but quickly fall into a semi-coherent mess. Likewise Ballard, who is at best coasting on the reputation of a 30 year old book. Ballard has had some great visionary ideas, but his sad insistence on overfocusing on sexual perversion as a compelling/repelling drive for his characters got tired a long, long time ago. If Tom Robbins was a humorless German surgeon instead of an aging hippie, you'd get a close approximation of Ballard's hang-ups. In Ballard's world, all forms of sexual expression are deviant, creepily desperate, and universally abundant. Ballard no longer seems like a literary provocateur, but more like a pedophilic, self-important older uncle that your family would rather not discuss. "Super-Cannes" is Ballard's rewrite of "Fight Club", with the rich and powerful assuming the roles of the disillusioned and powerless.
Rating:
Summary: A glimpse of the near-future now
Review: Repeating his previous effort Cocaine Nights (also outstanding), JG Ballard once again uses the mystery-thriller structure to engage us in his deep thoughts about a society where people are obsessed with working 7-days a week for 16-hours per day with the drive for corporate profits a transcendent virtue. When Paul Sinclair follows his wife Jane to Eden-Olympia, Paul is plunged into a mystery which no one seems eager to solve. Located near Cannes, Eden-Olympia offers multinational corporations a high-tech tax haven with temperate weather similar to Northern California's Silicon Valley. Busy executives live in crime and sickness-free enclaves leading extremely productive lives. Everything seems perfect except for the shocking mass murder recently committed by Dr. Greenwood, the pediatrician whom Jane is replacing. While Paul recovers from his injuries, he plunges head-first into discovering the motives and possible conspiracies behind Dr. Greenwood's murders. Many literary critics consider Ballard to be a science-fiction writer. More accurately, I consider Ballard a futurist capable of offering a glimpse of the near-future which our society and culture may be headed for. In Ballard's Eden-Olympia there is "an inability to rest the mind, to find time for rest and relaxation". The only prescription offered is "small doses of insanity" taking the form of robberies, rapes (and other fetishes), drugs, and kiddie porn. If Ballard is correct in his bleak vision, is it not unsurprising that the captains of industry - Welch, Koslowski, Skilling - all decided to play God (to one extent or another)? Going "a little mad" with adulterous affairs, grand larceny, and other felonious activities may have been the only way of staying sane in an unforgiving world demanding performance.
Rating:
Summary: Pier and Ocean
Review: The painter Piet Mondriaan is most famous for the strings of yellow and blue lines that make up his later works. The genesis of the blue and yellow paintings - the fascination with the convergence of vertical and horizontal lines - can be observed (quite tangibly) in the early paintings. Between 1908 and 1910, Mondriaan lived in the Zeeuws village Loverendale in Holland. It is here he painted "Trees along the gein" - a fairly straight rendering of trees reflected in water. You see the trees, you see the reflection. Four years on from "Trees along the gein", he painted "Tree1" - an interpreted tree: pure reflection, leaves as seen through the surface of a lake. What has all of this to do with JG Ballard, you ask yourself? Well. "Super-Cannes" is a progression from "Cocaine Nights" in the way that "Tree1" is a progression from "Trees along the Gein". You can see the creative mind at work as clearly as you can see a skimmed stone rippling across the surface of a lake. As with the paintings, there are great similarities between the two novels. Both begin after an atrocity - in "Cocaine Nights" a great fire, in "Super-Cannes" a killing spree. Both atrocities implicate the late-coming narrator - in "Cocaine Nights", the narrator's brother allegedly started the conflagration, in "Super-Cannes" the narrator's wife's former lover allegedly embarked on a killing spree. Both narrator's discover the world they have entered - in "Cocaine Nights" it is the leisure complex Estrella del Mar, in "Super-Cannes" it is the business park Eden-Olympia - is not what it seems. Each narrator investigates the atrocity, each narrator becomes implicated - in one way or another - with the deceptions they discover. Each novel contains a charismatic spokesperson for transgression - in "Cocaine Nights" there is the tennis pro Bobby Crawford, in "Super-Cannes" you have the psychiatrist Wilder Penrose. Each novel features a femme fatale moving in and out of the shadows - in "Cocaine Nights" she is called Paula Hamilton, in "Super-Cannes" she is called Frances Baring. Each of the enclosed worlds presented - the leisure complex, the business park - offers itself up as a microcosm for a kind of ambitious future, and - as with all ambition - the worlds want to expand: each novel includes plans for expansion. Indeed it is the proposed expansion of each world that provokes the narrator - in each case, a kind of procrastinating Hamlet - to act. The similarities between the two books do not dull the compulsion. Ballard is fierce (and seems to be growing fiercer as the decades pass). If anything, the similarities lend the differences that exist a certain dark parity. Where the residents of Estrella del Mar engage in drugs and wife swapping, the employees of Eden-Olympia vent their frustrations through paedophilia and race crime. Where Estrella del Mar picks fights with itself (provoking apathetic millionaires into community feeling by stealing videos and vandalising cars), Eden-Olympia regards itself as exactly what it says - a kind of Olympia, a residence to Gods who say exactly what is - and is not - permissible. The next important painting for Mondriaan was "Piers and Ocean", a painting that obscures the muddy reflection of "Tree1". "Piers and Ocean" is no longer clear. We had the tree, we had the reflection, next we had something else all together: an explosion of random vertical and horizontal lines that don't seem to fit together and don't seem to make sense in the way that the landscapes did. We can only hope that the third part of what is shaping up into a kind of trilogy for Ballard is as muddy and obscure and compelling as that.
|
