Cocaine Nights

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In the piece, B wakes to discover first that Shepperton is empty of all other people. Then that London is. Then the world. B wanders and wonders.

Definitely feel the need to justify this rating, and my disappointment with Ballard (who feels like a "writers' writer") in general. Got pretty far into a review using John Updike's nexus of critique, but then the internet happened, and GR decided to erase it all. I'll try and replace the loss soonish. There are some areas of parenting that pit one sacred rule against another, and render it impossible to obey both: drug-taking is one. I take honesty and openness pretty seriously, because it corrupts if you lie to your children; it role-models mendacity, and opens up the possibility that there are secrets so dark that you, the putative authority, have to hide, which leaves who in charge, exactly? And yet at the same time, obviously, my first and overwhelming priority is that they remain alive and, in an ideal world, sane, so I would never want to normalise high-risk behaviours, create mini-adventurers who’ll try anything once, even if they have no idea what’s in the anything. Ballard, however, is not easy to box into one genre. As well as writing extensively for science fiction magazines, he is also a master of dystopian fiction exploring behavior at the margins of society. Ballard’s dystopian work turns science-fiction on its head. Instead of exploring outer-space by setting his novels on far-off planets, Ballard aims to explore the darkest recesses of our ‘inner space’ in late 20th century consumerist societies. For example, his novel Crash (also turned into a critically-acclaimed movie) follows a group of car-crash fetishists who re-enact celebrity car-crashes for sexual arousal.

There are no space ships hovering above the Metro-Centre, with its "humid, microwave air", but the minds of the citizens who shop there have definitely been abducted by hyper-consumerism. Pearson starts to uncover the drives of the savage consumers of Middle England who lug home refrigerators, toasters, televisions, beat up Asian shopkeepers and lavish affection on the three giant teddy bears sitting in the atrium of the Metro-Centre. But of course the tone of the novel is very far from the cozy world of Christie. This is much more noir. This is about the seediness that lurks under the upstanding image of the people that hang around the poolside for years, playing bridge. The best thing about this book in my view is in fact the consistent noirish tone of it. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

Working with his brother’s former staff, at Club Nautico, and alongside the local police chief, Charles finds himself drawn into a deep-web of conspiracy, corruption, and general chaos. Outside the (White) Lines What makes these themes relevant today is that our 21st century seems to be heading toward the lethargy described in the novel. People all around the globe are growing too frightened to live life, and I believe it is Ballard’s prediction that it is only a matter of time before such a messiah appears to redeem us from this slump. For better or for worse. Protagonist Charles Prentice arrives in Spain to investigate his brother's involvement in the death of five people in a fire. In the Spanish upmarket coastal resort of Estella de Mar, and like everywhere in Ballard's future, crimes have no motives.This book started out with tremendous promise. That sounds more patronising than I would like. It blew my mind. Is that better? I couldn't believe I had avoided this author for so long. If you are an avid reader, not reading J.G. Ballard is like depriving yourself of air. Each sentence glitters with intelligence. The rhythm, the poise, the vocabulary, the imagery are all perfect. He has a fine sense of character and there is passion beneath his hard, cynical edge. Cocaine Nights comes at you like a conventional 'all-is-not-as-it- seems' whodunit. But all is not as it seems. Under the light crust of gentility lies a familiar Ballard landscape of sociopathic violence, transgressive sex and the inevitable pornographic web that lies in between. And at its centre stands Bobby Crawford, at once a deeply comic and utterly terrifying character one of Ballard's best monsters. As the tennis pro at Club Nautico, Crawford has become something of a messianic figure who has turned crime into a performance art.

When I was a young writer in the 1980s, I read Ballard's luminous, erotic story collection The Day of Forever. It was so formally inventive that I would not have guessed it had been published in 1967. Nor did I know that the baffled conservative literary establishment of his generation had tried to see off his early work as science fiction. Ballard always insisted he was more interested in inner space than outer space.

This book is a must read for anyone who has been affected by cocaine addiction. The founder of Cocaine Anonymous, Furic Henry provides readers with the original 12 steps that helped him get clean after years and years worth footage without success until he found sobriety through this program!