Vice is Nice - what rhymes with Cannes? (Super-Cannes - J.G. Ballard)

Member Name: demosthenes

Product:	Super-Cannes - J.G. Ballard
Date:	12/09/01 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: exciting, a damn good thriller

Disadvantages: a bit too long for its own good, feels a little like more of the same

Paul and Jane Sinclair travel from Maida Vale in the UK to Eden-Olympia in the area known as Super-Cannes, a hotbed of corporate parks in the hills above Cannes, France. Jane has been hired as the resident paediatrician of this little city, its name linking it to the paradise of Christianity and the seat of the gods of classical Greek religion. She is assuming the post of David Greenwood, her one-time lover and fellow intern at Guy’s Hospital in London, and now the infamous doctor of Eden-Olympia who one day lost control and murdered seven high-profile people in the city, and three lowly (in comparison) hostages. Greenwood stalked the glass and concrete avenues with a hunting rifle, picking off his prey in a cold-hearted and meticulously planned and orchestrated manner.

Super-Cannes is JG Ballard’s latest novel (in the shops now) and picks up where he left off in Cocaine Nights (see my review: Welcome to the 21st century, Charles), exploring the new social psychosis that has been born in the mixing of leisure and work, behind the electrified walls of coastal resorts and the mirrored glass of corporate high-rises. As with Cocaine Nights, this book is simultaneously one of ideas, charting a new wave in social thinking and behaviour, and a thriller, leading the reader through a murder investigation. Ballard has learned some tricks from writing Cocaine Nights, and the thriller aspect of this novel is some of the most exciting murder investigation plotting and description that I have ever read. Ballard is a master of menace, and he does a good job of building suspense, twisting the plot, veiling the motives etc., as he guides us, with the voice of Paul Sinclair, through an investigation into the murders committed by David Greenwood.

Paul’s investigation, although it encompasses all the deaths, is really centred on the death of Greenwood himself. Paul suspects that the truth has not been revealed about why Greenwood went on a killing sp
ree, why he killed the people he did, and how and where he actually died. Unwittingly escorted through his investigation, which is also his education into the darker side of Eden-Olympia, by Frank Halder, a security man at Eden-Olympia, and by a blonde woman who initially remains anonymous, Paul hobbles around on his injured knee, and cruises the streets of Super-Cannes in an antique Jaguar limousine. Paul is the anomaly in this new paradise, not interested in business, money or corporations. He is there to support his wife, and to recover from a flying accident that has left his knee weak and infected.

As with Cocaine Nights, the further you get into the novel, the more attentive you become. Ballard’s vivid imagery fades to the background, and the world he is describing, the people and their behaviour, come to the fore. Ballard executes a brilliant balancing act, unrolling a murder mystery so as to excite his readers, then weaving that very excitement into the alternative psychology that he has laid behind the action. He will draw you into his world as surely as Paul and Jane are drawn into the world of Eden-Olympia, a latter day Adam and Eve, a deluded Zeus and Hera.

I really enjoyed this novel, but not as much as I enjoyed Cocaine Nights. I think though, that unless, like me, you have read a LOT of Ballard, you will find it gripping. What bored me a little was the repetition of the socio-psychological preaching that Ballard slips into all his novels, but which becomes slightly repetitive and predictable after a while. He is, after all, a monomaniacal novelist, each book a thinly veiled reworking of the same themes, characters, images and elements, but executed with enough style and mastery that you hardly ever notice that you’re reading the same book time and again. These are books which cut deeply, like a scalpel – they don’t spread themselves. What they do is release a wave of interest that crashes up against a coastlin
e of thought that is jagged, steep and narrow. That’s an appalling metaphor – I apologise. I think what I am trying to say is that if you read this book, more likely than not you will find it exciting and interesting, but at the same time, you will either think it is a little sick, or a little silly, or just BRILLIANT! It is provocative.

Longer than most of his other novels, Super-Cannes does flag somewhat towards the end. There is something a little forced in the mixing of thriller and “ideas novel”, but it is worth reading for the thriller bits (how many times have I said this now?): when Paul finally discovers how Greenwood died, you will be unable to stop reading, and there is a car chase which would make any movie a winner. It surprises me, actually, that so few Ballard books have been made into movies, but then at the same time it doesn’t.

It surprises me because his writing is jam-packed with imagery, vivid and carefully constructed – the kind of images and description that could be immediately translated onto the screen. Likewise the plot, action and pacing of his novels: all these elements would translate directly onto the screen, without any need for re-writing. What is more difficult to translate and capture, however, is the obsessional quality that his novels offer up – the monomaniacal exploration of what Ballard terms ‘inner space’, a surreal zone where the only reality left to us, he proclaims, is what’s inside our head and the rest of existence must be perceived as ‘an enormous novel’.

There is always something somewhat strange about a Ballard novel, but there is also always something very exciting about them: you feel, perhaps, that you have glimpsed an aspect of reality that you were unaware of, that you have seen the face of a killer reading over your shoulder, or felt the hand of a lover on your thigh – these books, despite their strangeness,
are intimate and dangerous, and that’s why I love them.

Summary: