Super-Cannes (Hardcover)

Once things are set in motion it was hard for me to put this down--the last few hundred pages went in one sitting--my pulse quickened, sweating as my body experienced the conflicting curiosity, arousal and horror felt by Ballard's Sinclair.

More visceral bite than Cocaine Nights but with similar concerns; the works share some themes and structures, but also many differences and divergences.

Read them both, Cocaine Nights as starter and Super Cannes as your main course.

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.