A review by thekarpuk
Millenium People, by J.G. Ballard
3.0
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.
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.