Super-Cannes
by J. G. Ballard · first published 2000
80% recommend20% critical
In the hills above Cannes, a European elite has gathered in the business-park Eden-Olympia, a closed society that offers its privileged residents luxury homes, private doctors, private security forces, their own psychiatrists, and other conveniences required by the modern businessman. The book's protagonist, Paul, quits his job as an editor and moves to Eden-Olympia with his wife Jane when she is offered a job there as a pediatrician. At first glance, Eden-Olympia seems the ideal workers' paradise, but beneath its glittering, glass-wall surface, all is not well.
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Super-Cannes - JG Ballard
on “Ask HN: Great nontech book that you read recently?” ↗…Wild, might be a good place to start. With his novels, I would read the big three from the 70's (Crash!, Concrete Island, High Rise), and then maybe the two best of his latter period (Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes).
on ““I can't stop comparing everything to Black Mirror”” ↗I really enjoyed some of his later books too. Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes are great. Like a lot of his books they seem simple until you dig into them. They fry my brain a bit but that’s surrealism for you. Will Self has some good writing about Ballard.
on “The Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballard” ↗Super Cannes should be a perfect place to start for anyone reading this site.
on “We are living in a version of the future out of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson” ↗…violence, narcissism) that's held in check by modern society. He keeps going back to the theme of men (they're almost always men) regressing to a "natural" violent state: High Rise, Running Wild, Crash, Super-Cannes, Cocaine Nights, and so on are all about this. His later books are a little tiring because of this; too many books about rich people using violence as a means of psychological release, with a smattering…
on “Report on an Unidentified Space Station” ↗…High-Rise etc. followed in that vein. Crash is probably the best from this period. He wrote two autobiographical mainstream novels: Empire of the Sun is the famous one. The late 90s/2000s novels like Super-Cannes are all rethreads of earlier stuff; the Freudian pop-psych view that we are basically animals denied the outlet of violence got a bit tired at this point. They're really well written, but I felt Ballard…
on “We are living in a version of the future out of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson” ↗