Super-Cannes

JG Ballard covers familiar territory in Super-Cannes: new social structures under pressure, new psychopathologies to be explored. As he did in his previous novel Cocaine Nights, he has avoided the more abstract imagery and plot of Rushing to Paradise or The Day of Creation to create, on the surface, a more mainstream novel, clearly concerned with modern issues of racism, random violence and sexuality. But familiar territory is always the most deeply subversive place in a Ballard novel.

Eden-Olympia is more than a mere business park. It is an expensive and intense hive, the modern "Dream Palace" of "a new elite of administrators, enarques and scientific entrepreneurs"; its aim, "to turn Provence into Europe's silicon valley". Paul Sinclair finds himself with time on his hands in this radical environment when his young wife takes a job at Eden-Olympia. She replaces a doctor who killed 10 executives with a rifle before shooting himself. He left no note and no explanation. Sinclair finds himself living in the same house and learning some of the same lessons as the killer.

There are the (un)usual Ballardian motifs; the injured airman, the swimming pools, the cars, the voyeuristic sex and violence, the perverse personal iconography of the central characters (the hothouse social environment even harks back to High-Rise from 1975), but in this new context they are even more profoundly unsettling than before. The apparently slick, professional characters are flawed and ambiguous, while strange events, as in the outstanding novella Running Wild from 1988, lead to extreme conclusions. Ballard is an expert in explaining how what at first appears perverse, amoral or simply wrong, is actually obvious, sensible and sane, and then going even further. From the beginning, the clues are all there. Eventually, both Sinclair and the reader are clear on what must be done. --John Shire

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More Ludlum than Orwell - Rated
This was a disappointment. Ballard had the basis for a very interesting book, but has sailed off into light entertainment; unfortunately he is not a great thriller writer. The story-line is implausible, and the resolution assumes the kind of haplessness on the part of the state that made me weary of Robert Ludlum. A hero's dilemma has to be plausible and the actions needed to confront it rational. Even in a tragedy, the action and outcome should have some consistency with what we know about the hero and his world. Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" is tragedy: you can see it coming and there is now way out of it. Similarly you can see doom early in "A Streetcar Named Desire", but Blanche's fragility shapes it. Ballard's hero is caught up in a situation only through persistent stupidity. Ballard had the stuff for a great book and wrote pulp instead.

Super-Cannes & Cocaine Nights . A New Novel? - Rated
J.G. Ballard is back with his usual brilliance, passion, extremes and cynicism in his 2000 novel "Super-Cannes" which the sceptics could call a re-write of his masterly written previous (1996) novel "Cocaine Nights".

This time, the setting is Cote d'Azure instead of Costa del Sol, and the mystery of the newly entered surroundings are almost similar for the Englishmen arriving at the scene. In Cocaine Nights, Ballard showed the "useful" side of violence and its revitalising influence on people who seem to think a peaceful, secure, rich and luxurious lifestyle is just what they need in retirement. Cocaine Nights was the story of violence and excess which began harmlessly with a string of car thefts and smash-ins. But Ballard never stops at that, things soon get out of hand. You will read this fantastic story by Britain's top living novelist and devour every page with a rising pulse.

In Super-Cannes however, Ballard tackles globalisation and the new corporate world's ruthless rule over the surrounding peoples and societies, its outbreaks of violence over ethnic communities and the obscenity of its perverse top directors and bureaucrats. At the French Riviera version of California's silicon valley (Super-Cannes) violence, racism and out of the ordinary sexual indulgence are already at gross proportions. The story unfolds as the middle aged husband (Paul Sinclair) of a young and pretty doctor (Jane) who is appointed to Eden-Olympia; high-tech business district with all the luxury, security and top directors; begins to investigate the mystery surrounding his wife's predecessor and ex-lover's (David Greenwood) mass killings and eventual suicide. As Paul follows the deceased doctor's (David Greenwood) footsteps to tragic end, he discovers the dark world lying beneath the gloss of Eden-Olympia. Alain and Simone Delages, a Belgian top executive and his bisexual wife are at the centre of perverse activities led by Eden-Olympia's resident psychiatrist Wilder Penrose, who is the brains behind acts of "psychopathy", a remedy to soothe the stresses of executive lifestyle. But then there is Frances Baring, a glamorously attractive woman in a sensual zebra-striped cocktail dress...

Super-Cannes is fantastic read but by and large lacks the surreal, shocking impact and originality of Cocaine Nights. Perhaps Ballard did not want to give a miss to the prospect of challenging globalisation using bits of his fantastic journey in Cocaine Nights.

Super-Can't - Rated
For frustratingly brief moments Super-Cannes delivers the reader into the familiar yet unsettling universe for which Ballard is best known; an arena of stultifying heat and empty space populated by a cast of unclear motivation and allegiance. In “Crash,” for example, this gives us the room to understand and empathise with characters whose sexual affinity with cars and mutilation is (presumably) quite alien to our own.

Here, though, it is difficult to develop the same degree of interest when the central character of Paul Sinclair meanders through the story with the same fuzzy lack of acuity with which JG Ballard has seemingly written this book. The action takes place in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park near Cannes where the aristocracy of European business have begun to create a new and self-contained culture which places Work at the apex of human interest, regarding leisure as an unnecessary hindrance. A dark seam of exploitation and violence stains the otherwise immaculate park and it is clear from very early on that the apparent civility of the place has some disturbingly abrupt limits. While Sinclair finds himself in situations which the alert reader will have anticipated chapters ahead, Ballard offers passages of annoying repetitiousness or lack of subtlety which lead one to question just how dozy he thinks his readership is.

For example, as Sinclair is examining a dose of the tranquilising painkiller which has been prescribed for his injured knee:

“…I thought again of the ever-sensible Alice, swallowing her ‘drink me’ potion. I put down the hypodermic and held the phial to the light. The label was printed with my name, but ‘inject me’ might well have been stamped across it in bold letters.”

Why does Ballard choose here to annoy the reader by needlessly expanding the reference? It’s as pointless as a stand-up comedian getting a good laugh then explaining the punchline in case someone failed to get it.

At his best, JG Ballard writes with a deceptively light touch, producing easily-swallowed prose that nevertheless takes some time to digest properly. His description of the advertising banner being towed behind an aeroplane “shivering” in the cold air illustrates the scene perfectly whilst reflecting the central character’s unease. However, in Super-Cannes this leads to a dissatisfying situation where there is simply not enough detail for the characters’ actions to be entirely believable. Plainly, it is not always necessary for one to sympathise with the protagonist for a book to succeed but in viewing the story through the eyes of Paul Sinclair a sense of helpless annoyance can overcome the reader as he fails time and again to understand what is going on around him.

Perhaps this is the author’s intention; to place us inside someone whose sense of entrapment he wants us to feel for ourselves. If this is the case, then this is compromised by Sinclair’s annoying passivity, which eventually starts to grate. Eventually, the plot does give some cathartic release on this point but by then it’s a case of too little, too late and too entirely predictable.

Ultimately this is a book which doesn’t do justice to its central conceit of a place where sanity can only be preserved through a measure of psycopathy. I have come to expect better from JG Ballard and would recommend this only to diehard fans or those seeking a more intelligent alternative to the more lightweight fiction out there.

Super-Can't - Rated
For frustratingly brief moments Super-Cannes delivers the reader into the familiar yet unsettling universe for which Ballard is best known; an arena of stultifying heat and empty space populated by a cast of unclear motivation and allegiance. In "Crash," for example, this gives us the room to understand and empathise with characters whose sexual affinity with cars and mutilation is (presumably) quite alien to our own.

Here, though, it is difficult to develop the same degree of interest when the central character of Paul Sinclair meanders through the story with the same fuzzy lack of acuity with which JG Ballard has seemingly written this book. The action takes place in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park near Cannes where the aristocracy of European business have begun to create a new and self-contained culture which places Work at the apex of human interest, regarding leisure as an unnecessary hindrance. A dark seam of exploitation and violence stains the otherwise immaculate park and it is clear from very early on that the apparent civility of the place has some disturbingly abrupt limits. While Sinclair finds himself in situations which the alert reader will have anticipated chapters ahead, Ballard offers passages of annoying repetitiousness or lack of subtlety which lead one to question just how dozy he thinks his readership is.

For example, as Sinclair is examining a dose of the tranquilising painkiller which has been prescribed for his injured knee:

"...I thought again of the ever-sensible Alice, swallowing her 'drink me' potion. I put down the hypodermic and held the phial to the light. The label was printed with my name, but 'inject me' might well have been stamped across it in bold letters."

Why does Ballard choose here to annoy the reader by needlessly expanding the reference? It's as pointless as a stand-up comedian getting a good laugh then explaining the punchline in case someone failed to get it.

At his best, JG Ballard writes with a deceptively light touch, producing easily-swallowed prose that nevertheless takes some time to digest properly. His description of the advertising banner being towed behind an aeroplane "shivering" in the cold air illustrates the scene perfectly whilst reflecting the central character's unease. However, in Super-Cannes this leads to a dissatisfying situation where there is simply not enough detail for the characters' actions to be entirely believable. Plainly, it is not always necessary for one to sympathise with the protagonist for a book to succeed but in viewing the story through the eyes of Paul Sinclair a sense of helpless annoyance can overcome the reader as he fails time and again to understand what is going on around him.

Perhaps this is the author's intention; to place us inside someone whose sense of entrapment he wants us to feel for ourselves. If this is the case, then this is compromised by Sinclair's annoying passivity, which eventually starts to grate. Eventually, the plot does give some cathartic release on this point but by then it's a case of too little, too late and too entirely predictable.

Ultimately this is a book which doesn't do justice to its central conceit of a place where sanity can only be preserved through a measure of psycopathy. I have come to expect better from JG Ballard and would recommend this only to diehard fans or those seeking a more intelligent alternative to the more lightweight fiction out there.

A kind of waiting madness, like a state of undeclared war - Rated
The opening of 'Super-Cannes' is more languid, and less tense, than that of 'Cocaine Nights'; but the narrative of each novel develops in a similar direction, and the echoes between the books are impossible to ignore. When taken as a pair they elucidate, fascinatingly, the changes and continuities in Ballard's writing. The pervasive linguistic and thematic link between the novels, and the sense that the broad strokes of the plot are shadowing - at a distance - the events of Ballard's earlier novel, suggest strongly that 'Super-Cannes' is more than just a companion piece but something more elaborately related: a reiteration, with the central premise dramatically adjusted; or, simply, 'Cocaine Nights' viewed through a complex, slightly distorting looking glass.

Sinclair, the narrator, arrives in Eden-Olympia (a large business complex) with his wife, Jane, a Doctor who has accepted a prestigious post in the park's clinic. The appointment, and their arrival, is complicated by the fact that the last person to hold the post, and live in their accommodation, was killed after embarking on a massacre of the executives (among others) he was in Eden-Olympia to treat. David Greenwood, the doctor who becomes a murderer, is the mystery at the heart of the novel. It isn't long before traces of the murders begin to appear, stray bullets and ghosts walking the spaces occupied, now, by Sinclair and his wife. Just as Charles became ever more embroiled in his investigation, Sinclair comes to be dominated by his fascination with the past. Gradually everything about Eden-Olympia seems, to Sinclair, to be contingent on the truth (or lack of) behind Greenwood's sudden, inexplicable madness.

While 'Super-Cannes' displays the usual hallmarks of a Ballard novel - sharply observed prose; eerie, unsettling atmosphere; deluded narrator surrounded by liars - it fails cohere as cogently as 'Cocaine Nights', its closest relation. Sinclair picks up the trail but there is no urgency to his investigations, narrative ambling after narrator. Much of this is intentional - Ballard wants the reader to be one (or more) steps ahead of Sinclair, to be frustrated by his inefficient actions and blindness to perpetual mendaciousness. But the side-effect - problematic in terms of pacing - is that the reader is left so distant from, and irritated by, Sinclair, that rather than feeling compelled to discover what happens (as was the case with 'Cocaine Nights') they are left with a growing apathy. Nevertheless, 'Super-Cannes' is a rich, intelligent novel - full of surprises - rewarding the patient reader with a denouement that, masterfully, manages to be both shocking and subdued.