Ballard transplants Dostoyevsky's Possessed, Conrad's Secret Agent, and DeLillo's Mao II into the gated-residential purgatories of riverside London in 2003's Millennium People, one of his most polished and disquieting satires.Upfront Disclaimer: If you're put off by mordantly hyperbolic similes or characters who pontificate like Kevin Spacey in Se7en, you'll probably want to skip this one (and everything else by JGB). Dust on a coffeetable is described as "a nimbus that seemed like an ectoplasmic presence, a parallel world with its own memories and regrets." And so on.In the mirror of Ballard's prose, my reflection is twofold: giggly imp alongside mindblasted void gazer......the nervous, unsure laughter of someone who totes the Cyclopedia of Neuropathology for beach reading. Put another way, Ballard's dystopian sandbox often seems like the driest of practical jokes, a staring-contest between author and reader, the latter squinting a bit at the book's conceit (an insurgent "revolutionary" gang of middle-class technocrats losing their shit over parking meters and school fees and "double lines" in the street, led by a rogue pediatrician hiding out in a derelict children's hospice) but just as eager to be trumped along by its diabolically stacked deck. Rest assured, this isn't some frenzied hysterical-realist free-for-all -- Ballard's manias are nimbly anchored to the bleak ironies of industrial media culture. Poker-faced hyperbole may be rampant in his fiction, right down to the level of the sentence (those unhinged similes again), but the edgy clairvoyance and devious wit combine to nudge me out of my stupor, to make me uneasy with the cloistered life I've lived, playing the radical in my head, but timid as a dormouse the moment I leave my book-throttled hidey-hole.In short, Millennium People is J.G. Ballard's Fight Club, a vertigo of revolt to jumpstart the moldering spiritual battery of We, the Overcivilized. Great fiction returns us to the world, so this book's discomfiting poke at my self-esteem stands as indebted praise.*spoilers follow*The blueprint for MP breaks no new ground: Ballard's surrogate-protagonist encounters a time-lapsed doppelganger several degrees ahead of him in pathology (or visionary potency), is spurred and radicalized by this accelerated self, eventually overtaking or inheriting the latter's dividends by pushing further into the liberating abyss of a possibly-demented, possibly-evolutionary ego-metamorphosis.Exceeeeept...that's not what happens here. Instead, Ballard turns into the skid of what appears to be a traditional "happy ending," but echoing the lobotomized calm of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, a prodigal son happily reclaimed by the Ministry of Love, or in this case, the bourgeois Nirvana of middle-class solace, of structural certainty, of sleepy gratitude to the gods of commerce.In a gloomy stroke of genius (most likely a complete projection on my part), Ballard seems to tie ALL happy endings to Winston Smith. All those books you've read where the protagonist triumphed? Nope. S/he just trundled away into the oblivion of a dull, complacent order. Consummate protagonists, like Ulysses, go stir-crazy at the prospect of anticlimax, or end with a soldier's funeral a la Prince Hamlet.Richard Markham, the psychologist hero of Millennium People, wipes his spectacles, straightens his tie, and gets back on the treadmill.from the Director's Commentary of this review ...or in this case, the bourgeois Nirvana of middle-class solace *[until the medical bills for your ruptured stomach ulcer tank your finances], of structural certainty *[until your knowledge-worker skill-set is offshored on the cheap], of sleepy gratitude to the gods of commerce *[until those same maestros of high-finance steer your 401K off another cliff].Bid adieu to that age when a framed college diploma meant surety against anguished obsolescence and a steaming pile of nothing to retire on. These happy days are yours and mine, happy days.
I read a comment piece this week about how the London-centric nature of the British media distorts the national argument. It put forward the theory that those working for newspapers, TV and radio don’t really appreciate that the views of their friends and neighbours in Islington or Hampstead are not necessarily shared by the wider populous. That piece (by whom, and where I read it, are details I’m afraid I cannot remember) stayed vivid in my mind as I read this novel about residents of well-to-do Chelsea Marina engaging in armed rebellion. Sickened by parking charges, maintenance fees, the price of good schools and the need to keep up with one’s neighbours, they launch attacks on various genteel sacred cows in a wild expression of middle class fury born out of malaise. Ballard drops in little references to how the revolution is spreading beyond the Capital (to Guilford and such places), but this is very much a novel of the London chattering classes.This 2003 book has to be one of the odder responses to what happened on 9/11. It seems that Ballard looked at the events of that day and determined that, for all the terrorists’ claims, the violence committed was utterly pointless. To ram that idea home, he wrote a novel where the violence is (largely) utterly random and meaningless and is actually committed for a comically meaningless cause. It’s actually a good idea, as nearly all acts that terrorists commit worldwide are needlessly devastating to no real effect. Furthermore, Ballard’s concept allows him to skewer the worst excesses of the Guardianistas, those folk who sit in their million pound houses, quaff champagne and speak of how they know true suffering. And yet the whole doesn’t really work. Since most of the characters we meet are on the revolutionary side, there’s a sense in which we’re implicated in what they believe (and also their actions can’t be made to seem as ridiculous as they should be). While the stylised nature of the violence (apart from the initial assault on Heathrow), means that it gets nowhere near the actual horror of a 9/11 or a 7/7 and so it doesn’t really slam home its point.As such this is not my favourite Ballard (if you want to try a novel from his later period go for the excellent ‘Cocaine Nights’). The plot: a traumatised everyman falls under the spell of a scarred outsider whose deadly compulsions are getting gradually worse and who is aiming to go out with something spectacular; of course feels like another version of ‘Crash’. But this book gets nowhere near its predecessor’s unsettling power. While diversions late on in the story into the Jill Dando case and the Hungerford massacre, feel somewhat jarring. There are good things in this novel – particularly in the early skewering of the complacent middle classes – but it’s neither twisted enough to be a disturbing thriller, nor sharp enough to be truly successful satire.
What do You think about Millennium People (2012)?
Ballard writes of middle-class revolutionary movement sweeping Britain. Well done. A fun read.. pretty straight forward rejection of mass consumerist alienating conformist modernity.. but without much politics. Makes it very fun and reckless. No one really knows what is going on. The French Revolution anyone? Big middle-class revolution. I thought of this a few times, not sure. I am sure that the writing is very inviting. Have a look at two passages."I watched you in court this morning. The magistrates were faced with something they hate above anything else - a responsible citizen ready to sacrifice himself for his principles.’ ‘I hope I am. Aren’t we all?’ ‘Alas, no. Protest is one thing, action another. That’s why we need you on the project.’ ‘I’m with you. What exactly is the project? Picketing travel agencies? Banning tourism?’ ‘Much more than that. We aren’t defined by Kay’s obsessions.’ Aware that this might sound harsh, he took Joan’s hand. Sitting forward, he massaged his cheeks, trying to bring colour into the gaunt bones. ‘Look at the world around you, David. What do you see? An endless theme park, with everything turned into entertainment. Science, politics, education — they’re so many fairground rides. Sadly, people are happy to buy their tickets and climb aboard.’ ‘It’s comfortable, Stephen.’ Joan traced a Chinese character on the back of his hand, a familiar symbol at which the clergyman smiled. ‘There’s no effort involved, no surprise.’ ‘Human beings aren’t meant to be comfortable. We need tension, stress, uncertainty.’ Dexter gestured at the film posters. ‘The kind of challenge that comes from flying a Tiger Moth through zero visibility, or talking a suicide bomber out of a school bus.’ Joan frowned at this, her eyes losing their focus. ‘Stephen, you tried that in Mindanao. You nearly got killed.’".................................................................."Visiting Chelsea Marina in the week after our Twickenham expedition, I listened to the doorstep meetings, trying to catch any hint of involvement in the Heathrow bomb. I was surprised by the growing number of protest groups. Leaderless and uncoordinated, they sprang up at dinner parties and PTA meetings. One committee planned a sit-in at the offices of the management company responsible for Chelsea Marina’s abysmal services, but most of the residents were now set on a far more radical response to the social evils that transcended the local problems of the estate. They had moved on to wider targets - a Pret A Manger in the King’s Road, Tate Modern, a Conran restaurant scheduled for the British Museum, the Promenade Concerts, Waterstone’s bookshops, all of them I exploiters of middle-class credulity. Their corrupting fantasies had deluded the entire educated caste, providing a dangerous pabulum that had poisoned a spoon-fed intelligentsia. From sandwich to summer school, they were the symbols of subservience and the enemies of freedom."
—Bob Reutenauer
Something can only strive for a certain level of irony before I start feeling like I don't know how seriously to treat the subject matter.Oddly, this feeling comes from the quality of J.G. Ballard's writing. It's very fluid and pulls you into the situation with ease. The trouble is the situation.It all centers around a middle class rebellion that the narrator gets pulled into through a bomb at the Heathrow airport that kills his ex-wife. The middle class rebellion in question is over utterly petty concerns such as utility fees and so forth, and they express their anger by smoke bombing video stores and ruining movie theaters that show classic cinema.It's a silly reason, one that I can't imagine any group of middle class citizens actually rallying around. Therefore I have to consider it an absurdist sort of statement. What creates a sort of dissonance is how deadly earnest the rest of the story is. There's not a lot of humor, or a suggestion that the whole story is one big ironic statement about the middle class or modern culture.Maybe it's the narrator of my audiobook edition. Maybe his delivery just prevented me from seeing just how whimsical the whole thing is supposed to be.Or maybe I just don't get middle class culture in England, which is apparently a lot more posh than its American equivalent.
—Nicholas Karpuk
"Take a good look. Twickenham is the Maginot Line of the English class system. If we can break through here everything will fall." The death of psychologist David Markham's ex-wife in a terrorist bombing at Heathrow airport embarks him on a journey to the heart of darkness. In the new millennium it lies in the fashionable London borough of Chelsea where the professional middle-class has been driven to a cul de sac. There a modern day Kurtz, Dr. Richard Gould, as mad, bad and dangerous as his predecessor in the African jungle, wants to lead them out with guns blazing and bombs exploding. Gould's associate, Kay Churchill, a one woman recipe for a nervous breakdown, considers collateral damage as unfortunate but necessary.In London, that has been turned into a playground for hedge fund managers, Arabs and Russian's and their lackeys, the professional middle-class has become modern day miners. "Professional qualifications are worth nothing - an arts degree is like a diploma in origami." Revolution seems to be around the corner as solicitors have turned their regimental ties to fuses for Molotov's cocktails. After all Robespierre himself was a lawyer by profession.Ballard is a great writer and this story has no real dull moments. At times Ballard really shines "A faint but expensive scent floated between us, the tang of an unusual toothpaste, hints of the first-class lavatories on long-haul Cathay Pacific flights, a dream of sable coats and Hong Kong boarding lounges." However, it failed to really excite me. It is a third too long and too tongue-at-cheek at times. Or maybe his take on modern life was jus too close to home for comfort.
—Kimmo Sinivuori
