Kingdom Come: A Novel

Kingdom ComeBy J.G. Ballard4th Estate/Harper CollinsIn his astonishing new novel J.G. Ballard has discovered the apocalypse in the form of washing machines, stereo units and every other form of what his characters have dubbed, with both political and religious fervour, Consumerism.Ballard's novels have often touched a nerve, from his erotic-schizoid Crash to his semi-autobiographical The Empire of the Sun. Much of his earlier work was decidedly fantastical and often generically dubbed science fiction. But in his recent novels Ballard has been investigating the present. Often dubbed a Futurist, his conclusions are unnerving indeed.In some ways Kingdom Come is a return to form for Ballard. His three previous novels - Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes, Millennium People - seemed somewhat anchored by his attempts to grapple the strangeness of contemporary suburban life. But in Kingdom Come Ballard is both terrifyingly insightful and at his most phantasmagorical best.Kingdom Come in its 280 pages seems to achieve a strangely heroic, epic scale. In essence it is the story of a rather ineffectual, unemployed advertising executive, Richard Pearson. But when Pearson's father is murdered in a labyrinthine shopping mall in suburban Brooklands near the Heathrow Airport he sets out to investigate why the initially accused shooter has been set free. Thus begins a surreal journey into the heartlands of English suburbia, thuggish sports riots, racism, terrorism, hostage-taking, contemporary politics, consumer greed, religious extremism, family relations and far more.Where Kingdom Come succeeds is in its fine high-wire act of balancing pure farce, surreal imagery and real world events. One suspects that Ballard, who lives in suburban Shepparton outside of London, may have personally witnessed some of the racist attacks that have become commonplace during soccer riots; he depicts the senseless vandalism and violence with solemn clarity.He is equally acute in describing the culturally void environs in which such violence occurs. His satellite suburbs are essentially devoid of, libraries, art galleries or traditional places of worship. His Brookland is dominated by a central grand edifice, a vast shopping mall dubbed the Metro-Centre, the site of what he comes to believe is his father's deliberate assassination.Brooklands has become dominated by the semi-martial football gangs. The populace wear clothing adorned with the cross of Saint George, without which one is invariably a target of the hooligans.Ballard's tale builds powerfully as Pearson's paranoia grows apace, leading to a hostage situation replete with a virulent form of Stockholm Syndrome. On the wild ride we encounter many of Ballard's favourite tropes and his increasing tendency towards self-referentiality. Pearson's father was an airline pilot, leading to riffs reflecting Ballard's fascination with flight - "a reverie of wings that overflew deserts and tropical estuaries" - references to his earlier books, The Drought and The Day of Creation respectively. The near-by racetrack features a monument to the 1930s; "the heroic age of speed, the era of the Schnieder Trophy seaplane race and record-breaking flights."Ballard's nostalgia for the '30s and the notion of flight and freedom are personal touchstones for the author. He was born in 1930 in Shanghai and shortly afterwards his family were interred in a civilian prison camp. Like the author himself, it doesn't take long for Pearson to be similarly entrapped, as much psychologically as physically, when he visits the Metro-Centre.The mall has become the town centre. "No one attends church. Why bother?" a character muses early in the piece. "They find spiritual fulfillment at the New Age centre, first left after the burger bar."Pearson's initial attempts to leave Brooklands and return to London are thwarted early on as all roads seem to lead back to the Metro-Centre and its immediate environs. Initially panicked, Pearson soon concludes that the Centre "smothered unease, defused its own threat and offered balm to the weary."But the muzak played in the mall has a distinctly martial edge to it, which is more stringently replicated when the football hooligans begin marching in step and wearing uniforms emblazoned with the cross of St. George.As always Ballard rewrites the rules. Rather than Modernism being followed by Postmodernism, in Kingdom Come Modernism is followed by Consumerism which at its extreme is compared to Nazi Germany and fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. All, his central character posits, are "states of willed madness."As a new regime emerges from the chaos of football violence we are led through a thinly veiled analysis of disinformation that is easily read as a metaphor for Tony Blair's government.The new regime take over the Metro-Centre, holding the mass of consumers hostage, many of them joining the insane campaign to establish a new Consumerism. The Centre becomes a tropical sauna, an enclosed environment where cargo-cult style shrines appear in the mist. This is Ballard's most evocative writing for many years, a descent into madness that sees the ultimate shopping mall meet Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

The last novel by author J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come is a disturbingly prophetic allegory of the unconscious societal shift towards fascism in affluent nations. The story follows recently fired advertising executive Richard Pearson, who travels to the suburban wastelands along the M25 to handle the estate of his father, who was killed during a shooting at the monolithic domed Brooklands Metro-Centre shopping mall. As Pearson investigates his estranged father's death, he is slowly sucked into cults and conspiracies seemingly centered around a new form of consumer politics and organically free-range fascist movement. Racist sports hooligans and deified cable show hosts grow in power and intensity as Pearson's quest to catch his father's killer becomes a crusade to force the societal worship of the Metro-Centre to the next level.Ballard's prose is poetic and haunting, so much so that it can occasionally feel contrary to the extensive analytical dialogues scattered throughout, as the Ballard's main characters often serve as little more than a loudspeaker for the author's philosophical quandaries. Ballard's fascination is not with the individual as much as it is with society as a whole, and how it can often breathe and flex interdependently from its unsuspecting inhabitants. Kingdom Come is one of the more hopeful apocalyptic dystopian screeds you'll find, primarily because Ballard isn't attempting to condemn mankind, but to understand, and possibly even empathize.

"Kingdom Come" is intended to be a satire of modern consumerist culture in which the protagonist, searching for the cause of his father's supposedly random death at the hands of a shopping mall gunman, stumbles on to an unsettling suburban culture of violence, xenophobia...and extreme shopping.Central character Richard, a recently unemployed ad executive, finds himself in the middle of a strange cast of characters living in a London suburb whose obsession is a massive shopping complex called the Metro-Centre. The Metro-Centre, a giant 7-story complex filled with every sort of shop imaginable, has taken on a life of its own, supplanting the old town way of life and refocusing the inhabitants on perpetual material acquisition, food courts, and mall-sponsored soccer teams. A rift between the town's anglo-saxon residents and the local immigrant population has developed and it's somehow tied to the growing dominance of the Metro-Centre. Richard senses something really odd is going on with the social dynamic and he hangs around long enough to become embroiled in the drama.Turns out that the Metro-Centre is becoming the basis for an all-out suburban fascist dictatorship. Richard, ad man that he is, decides to become the puppet master behind the Metro-Centre's celebrity spokesperson--essentially volunteering to be its propaganda minister. This may all remind you a bit of Pink Floyd's "The Wall"; just substitute devotion to shopping culture for fanaticism over rock music.What seems like a great opportunity for satire is unfortunately dragged down by a languid and generally disinteresting plot. The "mystery" of Richard's father's death is not that mysterious and the characters he interacts with are lifeless. Ballard's point is very clear: modern consumerism is nuts; we've all lost our collective minds. For generations, ad men have told us what to want and have, to a certain extent, gotten us to do their bidding. Why not take it one step further and imagine a world in which shopping completely replaces communities, government and all other forms of human organization? Great idea for a story, but his handling of it is just rather dull and drawn out. "Kingdom Come" might have made for a good short story, but it lacks the propulsion to drive a full novel.

I am especially excited that this book came from an Irish dealer who deals in rare books and artworks. This book is part of a group of books by JG Ballard that I plan to read while recovering from cardiac surgery, should make for a good workout for the brain.

Some of his books can be hit or miss but this latter day novel is right up there with his best work.

Encapsulates changing times and classic dystopian Ballard. Having grown up in these motorway lands the accuracy and outlook are spot on. The books has a nice bonus interview with him at the end.

If you're the sort of person who doesn't believe in depression, this book will be life-changing. Or death-enhancing. The sort of ineluctable dawning horror of seeing a train bearing down on you as you frantically try to start your car that has stalled on the track, the stuff of panic, of our worst nightmares. Not quite the worst - the worst is that this one is real. Isn't it??

前3作で Ballardは社会階層によって閉ざされた地域で現代人に潜んだ残虐性とその歪んだ精神病理を描き出しました。本作でも同様に倦怠に陥った人々が暴力に走っていく様子が描かれます。ただ今回の社会実験の場は不特定多数に開放されたされた超巨大ショッピングドーム Metro-Centre とその周辺の地域でありサンプルは100万人規模の住民です。ロンドンの広告マン・リチャードの父はブルックランズのメトロセンターで精神障害者による銃乱射の犠牲者となります。リチャードは事件の周辺を探ってるうちにセンターにはまり込んでしまいます。メトロセンターが父を殺したとはどういうことなのかを追っていくうちに自らがセンターのプロパガンダに深く巻き込まれていくのです。で、ブルックランズ周辺で何が起きてるのかというとメトロセンターを中心とする消費者社会とスポーツサポーター(フーリガン)が合体したソフトファシズムなのです。Ballardは「何でも自由に購入できる消費者主義社会とは結局は多数意見に従わざるをえなくなる大衆政治の新しい形である」などとうそぶきながら人々が人種的な襲撃などの残虐性に目覚め偽・全体主義の空気に包まれていく様子を描いています。他の作家なら破綻してしまいそうな極端な世界を整然と描ききる語りの技術は十分楽しめます。騒ぎを引き起こす人物達の動機面での曖昧さにもかかわらず確固たる狂気の世界を創造しています。ただmass politics を語るのにマスメディアへの言及がほとんど無いことや消費者主義を語るのにインターネット社会を完全に無視したりと背景・環境面でやや不十分な印象です。今回のBallardの社会実験はフィールドとサンプルが少し大き過ぎたようです。