J. G. Ballard's 1975 novel about an apartment building and its inhabitants is as disturbing as it is iconic. The particular aesthetic crafted by Ballard has found a receptive audience among the far-right and neo-reactionary sorts, who seem particularly drawn to Ballard's dark imagery. Ballard's works, and High-Rise in particular, are referenced in the writings of Nick Land and Mark Fisher, and Reza Negarestani has referenced his work on his blog. As such, I felt it was important to become acquainted with at least 1 of Ballard's works.
The plot of High-Rise centers on the inhabitants of a brand-new luxury high rise apartment complex. The protagonist, Dr. Robert Laing, moves to the apartment after his divorce, at the urging of his sister. He purchases a long lease at the apartment and intends to integrate into his new community in the complex. Soon after Laing moves in, the building's social structure begins degenerating. The wealthier inhabitants of the top 5 floors suspect the lower floor residents of allowing their children to urinate in the pool, of being loud and unruly, and generally failing to show appropriate deference to their betters. The residents of the bottom 10 floors, for their part, believe the upper floor residents allow their dogs to defecate throughout the complex, that they interfere with the building's electrical, air and water supplies, and that they generally try to make life difficult for the building's less affluent residents. The majority of the building's residents are caught between these two extremes, and alternately defend and accuse both the lower and upper floor residents of breaches of conduct.
Quite soon, the artificial hierarchy of the tower becomes quite real. Residents from various floors are attacked after venturing too far from their home floors. Residents of rival floors lead raids to attack the services or inhabitants of other floors. A wealthy jeweler on the top floor falls through a window (possibly pushed?) to his death. The building's architect, Anthony Royal, who lives on the top floor, and Richard Wilder, a muscular TV producer from the lower floors, become the de facto leaders of their respective zones of the building. Laing and most of the building's residents are caught in the middle. Laing, a resident of the 25th floor near the center of the building, is forced to form tactical alliances with such frightening characters as the murderous orthodontist Steele, who amuses himself by arranging the dead bodies strewn about the building. By the end of the book, the majority of the building's inhabitants have either died or been killed, and the last few remaining residents have become quite feral.
The novel paints a very negative picture of humanity. The inhabitants of the tower all seem to recognize that what they are doing is not only wrong but can be entirely avoided. Despite the multitude of horrific events that occur, the residents assiduously avoid attracting police attention. If only some outside force had gotten involved, things could have returned to normalcy. Instead, the residents seemed quite intent to avoid attracting attention, that they might stay the course and continue their descent into a Hobbesian fever dream of violence.
So why did this happen? What caused this aberrant behavior? The obvious culprit here is the tower. The squeezing of the individuals into the artificial hierarchy of the tower seems to have been the waking force that roused their bloodlust. However, Ballard doesn't place all of the blame on technology. The tower's residents each had the potential for this hideous violence. The tower was simply the accelerant. Richard Wilder described the tower almost as a compressor or reactor:
For some time now he had known that he was developing a powerful phobia about the high-rise. He was constantly aware of the immense weight of concrete stacked above him, and the sense that his body was the focus of the lines of force running through the building, almost as if Anthony Royal had deliberately designed his body to be held within their grip.
Robert Laing also had something sinister to say about the lines of the building:
The cluster of auditorium roofs, curving roadway embankments and rectilinear curtain-walling formed an intriguing medley of geometries – less a habitable architecture, he reflected, than the unconscious diagram of a mysterious psychic event.
This book, more than most I've read, begs for analysis. I want to read papers, lots of them, about this book and what it can mean. The influence of new technology on people is certainly a theme. I wouldn't be surprised if this theme was one that eventually percolated into the writing of science fiction writers like Gibson. But it seems like there's more below the surface here.
One of Ballard's strengths is in his ability to write characters with believable internal monologues and self-image. Richard Wilder is largely viewed as a sort of lumbering brute, mostly due to his size and thick musculature, even though that's far from the truth. Ballard can write a character who is both intelligent and articulate internally while appearing to other characters as a dense savage. Other characters write Wilder off as a vicious giant, his brains addled by too much testosterone. However, that's far from the self-image Wilder has of himself. He looks at himself in the mirror and he sees an intelligent man, who works in film and has good taste. He has an intelligent and independent wife and overall seems like a well-balanced individual. That sort of dichotomy is hard to portray, with many authors writing characters who are essentially the same internally as externally. Ballard straddles this internal/external rift deftly.
The book is also filled with wonderful little tidbits that add humor to the dark scenery, for instance, this bit discussing Laing's first encounter with Steele, the orthodontist:
His slim face topped by a centre parting - always an indication to Laing of some odd character strain - pressed ever closer, and he half-expected Steele to ram a metal clamp or retractor between his teeth.
After reading the book, it's easy to understand why it's such a favorite of neo-reactionaries. Ballard takes a seemingly dark view of humanity, especially under the influence of new technology. I'd be interested to see what Nick Land draws from Ballard. And Ballard, better than possibly anyone else, grasps the alienating power of the allure of upward social mobility, the force that can cause people to carry out grievous acts of injury or malice against their fellow human beings in the name of promotions and advancements. He illustrates as much with lines like this:
The talk at Alice's party moved on two levels - never far below the froth of professional gossip was a hard mantle of personal rivalry. At times he felt that they were all waiting for someone to make a serious mistake.
That line invokes the environment we see now on the Left with purity testing and cancel culture, the need for Leftists to never make a mistake, to never accidentally malign or impugn a vulnerable group or class. Any online Leftist who strays risks not only the ostracism of the community, but an instant barrage of aggressive vilification in a positive feedback loop of one-upmanship. Like the middle-class need to exude professionalism and above-all “good taste”, many Leftists base their online persona on the appearance of immense wokeness.
High-Rise is horrific and wonderful. The book is so deftly written as to make its events seem almost believable. The characters are human enough that their descent into madness charts a course that anyone could follow. I see why it's so popular among those who are drawn to a dark aesthetic. I'm glad to have read it, as I expect I'll be seeing a lot of references to it in Dark Enlightenment and accelerationist literature.