Backlisted - Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

Monocle culture editor Robert Bound joins John and Andy to discuss JG Ballard's Spanish set thriller Cocaine Nights. Also, The Ballard-Bond connection, Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad, and the phrase you never want to hear John Mitchinson say in person...Timings: (may differ due to adverts)4'10 - The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead11:51 - Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And if it's not fresh, it's free. Yes, you heard that right. From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh, so you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. So it was the unbound birthday party. Are you saying this just to warn listeners that there may be a caveat?

That there may be a slight sluggishness to our tone? No, there's not a sluggishness, but I'm going to speak. Matthew Clayton, what did you have for breakfast? Oh. Electric soup. I think I'm yet to have breakfast, actually. You can't actually speak. I'm still on the liquid diet.

Listen to him. You might hear my voice has changed slightly. Regular listeners, listen to him. A good time inside by all, wasn't it, John? It was. It was a great party. We had a very jolly time. I had, funnily enough, breakfast. I had a really good breakfast in this really good cafe on City Road called the Aquila.

And they have a master full breakfast, an apprentice full breakfast, which is quite good. So I went for the full master, which was delicious. Did you? Did you have a pizza and then you could have a master and margarita? You're polite, thank you. What a lovely idea, a sort of literary pizza-themed kind of restaurant. So I've got a question about Unbound. Have you?

Yeah, I have, and it's a sincere question, which is, so Unbound's been going for five years. It's a publishing model that hadn't been tried before. Correct. What are the... Well, we would say it hadn't been tried since, you know, the 18th century. But what are the things that have surprised you in terms of this model over the last five years of crowdfunding books

rather than a publisher giving an author money to go away and write a book? I suppose the fact that the idea's gone down so well with so many people. For me, it's 126 countries, so we've had people pledge... 156. 156 countries sorry and i think that's really interesting i think that has um consequences for the future for our

what do you mean that you've now up to 100 people from 156 different countries have pledged for and i think also the other thing is that finding books in places where perhaps people haven't been expecting to find books before we a lot of the most successful things we've done, like Letters of Note, don't come through the normal route. Somebody has an idea, finds an agent, sells a book to a publisher. So does that answer your question? Well, not bad. Not bad, given your parlous state.

If you'd been there last night, you'd have heard a much more thoroughly thought through and detailed account of exactly what. No, but it's been, it's a blast. I haven't had, I've never done anything that I've enjoyed as much. And I've done a few things, as you know. You can bring the backing track in now. It's time for your song. Shall we go? Should we start? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, our sponsor and the website that brings readers and authors together. We're gathered once

more around the kitchen table here in Unbound Towers. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. With us today, as per usual, is the publisher and maverick doctor, Matthew Clayton. And we're also joined by Rob Bound. Rob's the culture editor at Monocle. What are we here to discuss today? What have you brought to the table for our delectation? I have brought Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard. Maybe this is the novel through which we can enter into a larger Ballardian sphere. Ding! I see this on Twitter, someone suggests it.

Every time the word Ballardian. A little bell would ring. Maybe it should be a drinking game. Okay, but what we it's traditional for me at this point to say to you Andy, what have you been reading? We've been reading, I've been reading and you've been reading,

a book that we actually mentioned when we were up in Durham a few weeks ago. We have. We decided today we were going to talk about that just briefly. It's a book by the American author, a novel by the American author Colson Whitehead called The Underground Railroad, which has been, certainly in the States, has been, and here, I guess, I think,

has been getting really, really good reviews, has already been nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in America. I think I recommended it to you, John, because the publisher here very kindly sent me a proof a few months ago. Yeah, I mean, you did, and I read it, I think, about a month ago. Yeah. And I have to say, it's the best book I've read all year,

and it's possibly the best book I've read in a very long time. It's just, I think, remarkable. You came and talked about it on Monocle Radio. Yeah, I came and I have talked about it before. I think if you don't know what it's about, we should say that it is antebellum, it's slavery, it's a counter-remarkable journey for of two characters towards freedom they're both slaves in the south the underground railroad was an actual it was an actual thing but

it wasn't the thing that is in this book that's one of the more remarkable things about whitehead i mean there's so much to admire about this novel but the way he turns what was a the railroad was a it was a metaphor for groups of people who helped slaves escape but what he does is he imagines the railroad as an actual underground railroad so it has almost a kind of marquesian merging of of real and there's a lot of history real history in the book and i think but also with a real contemporary resonance as well yeah there's a character who i don't want to again no spoilers but also with a real contemporary resonance as well yeah there's a character who i don't want to again no spoilers but there's a character who occurs later in the book who is very clearly to my mind supposed to have parallels with obama and um obama's

fate is not the right word but obama's effect and the potential disquiet and unhappiness that would cause to certain parts of the population. We're recording this, of course, a few days before the American elections. Yeah. In fact, Obama, this book was, in terms of the publishing win behind this book in the States, it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club straight away. Obama was reading it over the summer.

It had an incredible review in the New York Times by Kakutani. And if people don't know who Colson Whitehead is, he's the author of several novels, including this one called John Henry Days, which is a great novel. And his last book was called Zone One, was a big bestseller in the States again. And that, in contrast, is a New York zombie apocalypse book.

So he's got some range to draw on. It also brings out the best in reviewers, it seems. I've heard some really good reviews of it. I think because the facts, the details of slavery are probably presented in as raw and as... Several people have said there are times in this book where you sort of just have to put it down and go and walk around outside for a bit.

It is really harrowing. But not, I think, because he's trying just to shock. I mean, it's a beautifully, I think, constructed and artfully constructed, immaculately written... You know, it's one of those books, I read it pretty much at a sitting because once it grips you... First of all, I thought from a kind of... Is it published, by the way?

Yeah, it's out now. And it's published here, we should say, Ursula Doyle's imprint, Fleet, which is part of Little Brown. That's right. And also Colson Whitehead is here in the UK between November the 13th and November the 17th. And he's an amazing reader.

If anybody is listening to this and has a chance to go and see him, go and see him. If this doesn't win all the prizes it's entered. Well, this is one of the things that I wanted to talk about and I found fascinating about reading this book. So on the one hand, from a kind of literary, you know, editorial point of view, I read the book and thought, what a great book. It's fantastically written, real quality.

About something really important. Yeah. But I also thought with my former book selling hat on, I knew really quickly I was thinking, okay, this is going to be a big book. This is the sort of thing you could recommend to a customer absolutely very easily and straightforwardly right and i was wondering what what has it got do you think that makes it because we agree about this yeah it's the sort of book that's where we are a big book chain i'd immediately be thinking okay what can we do to get behind this we need to get behind this because this is going to be a big book. I guess it has that sort of perfect storm of...

I mean, you know, it's about slavery, it's about race. So it's got real meat, the content of the book, the lives of these two people, their family. It's formally ambitious, you know, without being in any way scary. I always felt that those books like, for example, Birdsong or The Secret History, those books that really take off, they make the reader feel as though this, hey, this literature thing, this literary fiction thing, this is easy. So it really pulls the reader in and takes them along, but does all these other things as well. I tell you why I was really fascinated by it actually to compare it to Paul Beatty's

winning novel The Sellout is there is going to be a lot of unfinished copies of The Sellout out there because as we said on this podcast back in the summer that is a book that really demands that you try your hardest to engage with it

and it's very intense. I didn't finish it. You didn't finish it? I barely started, in fact. I only got about 20 pages in. It's tough. It's a demanding read, right? Whereas this, whereas the Underground Railroad, I think is, and this is not to diminish the Underground Railroad at all, is a much more gripping, narrative-led proposition.

It really, I mean, that's the other thing. It's nail-biting. You know, it's people trying to escape. It's, I mean, that's the other thing. It's a nail-biting, you know, it's people trying to escape. Yeah. It's the oldest plot in the book. You know, it's a journey,

jeopardy on every page. Horrific, you know. They're pursued by, what's he called, the terrifying guy. Ridgway. Ridgway,

that's right, who's pursuing them. So you've got clear narrative. You've got big, powerful things and brilliantly, I mean, that's right, who's pursuing them. So you've got clear narrative, you've got big, powerful things, and brilliantly, I mean, the characters are... I sort of feel, you know, on Darchie, that kind of literary quality, but also great storytelling. I mean, you know, I remember reading The English Patient in manuscript

and you thought, wow, you know. And it does feel to me that this is obviously, that it's already a huge hit in america and i think you know you with a bit of the oxygen you'll get from prize shortlists and so on i'm sure it'll break it's a sort of it's it's i i think maybe i i mean i really liked it i've done i'm not sure i liked it as much as you did john but it is the sort of book that i think anyone who listens to this podcast i can't imagine why you wouldn't like it is the sort of book that I think anyone who listens to this podcast I can't imagine

why you wouldn't like it really no we both read quite a lot of contemporary fiction and to me it stands out

over most of the stuff I've read for the last two or three years I would say so you might want to wait

until it comes out in paperback lists but have it on your TVR have it on your TVR. Have it on your TVR binding, and that is a beautiful cover. They've done a... This is Fleet, right?

Yeah, that's lovely. A really nice job. I think it's the American setting, but it's still great. I mean, it's the sort of book that, as you say, Andy, you're not going to... I can't imagine anybody turning around and saying, God, that was a load of rubbish. I mean, even if you don't think it's a great book, you're going to remember it.

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That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights. There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment, and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness ends July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. Okay, so we are going to be talking about JG Ballard. It has become traditional. The first question that we ask our guests,

Rob, when did you first read this book, Cocaine Nights? So I first read Cocaine Nights. it was lent to me by a mate. I was going to Gibraltar, which is exactly where the book starts. And a mate of mine used to live in Gibraltar for tax reasons. And another mate of mine lent me this book and goes, it's good, it's a thriller, but it's like a bad thriller on purpose, is how he describes it, when i was maybe 19 or something and without revealing roughly what era are we talking about late 90s early so this is it this is late late 90s i think it just it

was in this form this beautiful original so this i've got the original 1996 hardback with the mirror cover and the splash and line of cocaine on it. People had it at school. It was kind of naughty and it looked good. It was an essential accessory in some ways. Anyway, I read it. I started reading it in Gibraltar on this slightly decadent, debauched holiday where we drove into Marbella and into Spain and sometimes came back and quite often didn't.

So in some ways it lived up to its title. That was the first time I read it. And I've read it many times since and read it a couple of times in preparation for this. So you read it at an impressionable age, is that right? Yeah, absolutely. At an impressionable age. It was an impressionable age for me,

but it shouldn't have been. I was clearly a late bloomer. That's very good. I suppose. When it came packaged like this, you kind of think, oh, there's something in that for me. Yeah, yeah, OK. And I was just intrigued by my friend's description of it

as a bad thriller almost on purpose. I was like, wow, I have to read this. And he devoured it in two or three days. And my supplementary question. That's a good line. My supplementary question, because we I have to read this. And he devoured it in two or three days. And my supplementary question... That's a good line. My supplementary question, because we've got to set this up. Yeah. My supplementary question is,

is that the first Ballard that you read? And did you become a Ballard fan as a result of this? Or was it subsequent books? I had muddled my way through Crash again, which was, again, one of these illicit, sort of a set text of the illicit brigade. So I struggled through that, didn't finish it, didn't get it, and I was too young to enjoy it at all.

So this was the first, but this was my entry into Ballard. OK. But you are a big Ballard fan. Since then I've become a huge Ballard fan, which is why I wonder, gents, whether or not this is classic Ballard, or even if it sort of has all the key bits of Ballard in it, or whether cocaine nights is a good gateway drug. I think what we should do, we don't normally do this,

but I think we should go round the table, starting with you, John, and state our position on Ballard. OK. My position on Ballard is that he is... I think he's one of the most interesting and important writers, English writers, of the late 20th century. I don't love him in the way that I know that some people do, but I never read a Ballard book and come away without a strong reaction. Sometimes that reaction is negative,

but mostly it is just marvelling at the density of ideas. You know, you often talk about English writers as being ideas-like. Well, Ballard is definitely ideas-heavy. And there is another thing that i find quite curious about him and i think a lot of people had this one like a lot of people my my entry to ballard was empire of the sun which is yeah really untypical ballad i now see yeah yeah and i guess to some extent that has overshadowed all my reading of the other books some of the early books and then the late we're talking about cocaine nights it's, we'll talk more about it,

the idea that he has this sort of strange late flowering where he writes kind of the same book three times. Yeah. They're sort of almost genre novels as well. Or are they? Yeah. So, Matthew, what is your position on J.G. Bellows? So, I think it's interesting it's interesting what stage in your life

were when you got interested in Ballard so for me it was when I was 15 or 16 and like Joy Division and Joy Division had the atrocity exhibition there was a bootleg Joy Division bootleg LP called the atrocity exhibition so he came to me as this oh it's this cool

slightly counter-cultural figure who wrote these weird british books that don't really feel that british in some way they felt sort of more european i think when i was a teenager so i read them as a teenager basically and then again i've come back to this you know super canon high rise more recently yeah and i like ballard yeah okay this is my position on joji ballard which anyone who follows me on Twitter will know I go on and on about. Right, so basically I am a Ballard sceptic.

At best. And I've never done so much prep for an episode of Batlisted. I'm so sorry for putting you through this. No, no, no. You know what? No, no, no, no. The Ballard that I'd read prior to Rob,

you saying that you wanted to come on and do Cocaine Nights, the ballad that I'd read was High Rise. But in the last month, I've read Empire of the Sun, Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, half the stories in the Terminal Beach, most of the interviews in Extreme Metaphors. So you've turned up to this and I feel a bit unwell. I've moved around i've

moved around what i how i feel about ballard quite a lot in the last month but i do want to read you this quote which basically i i think still sums up how i feel about ballard right and and it'll be something we talk about in relation to cocaine nights so this is a this is a quote from jonathan meads the great jonathan yes indeed yeah this is what he says he said this in an interview with the white review i find with ballard that the ideas are fascinating but the prose is a trudge grim there's no poetry it's just dull but the ideas are interesting Anthony Burgess once said there are two kinds of literature the really important one class a is only any good if you can turn it into a film and make any money

out of it whereas class b is interesting to read the prose is fascinating and the actual medium is used but I like the way that class a is kind of trash, and Ballard was pretty much Class A. He's a literary writer, but there's no joy in reading it. You read it for the information and the extremely interesting and often very disturbing ideas. Wow. Now, that's my position on Ballard. My position on Ballard is there are such interesting ideas, and in, for instance, the short stories, they last for 30 pages, and that's an appropriate length.

But this book, Cocaine Nights, it felt to me like a 330-page short story. It had a great central idea, and then off we go into the Ballardian... Ding! ...tropes of the drain swimming pools and the

you know we must talk about the sex scene well that is yeah I've got the sex scene post it noted

in my copy do not worry great I told you I've had this since I was almost much younger

man who are we to disagree with Jonathan Meads I think both of their minds work in similar ways as well, actually. In lots of ways. I think their preoccupations are the abject subjectivity

of the way their minds work is probably aligned. I'm just going to read a little bit of the author biog, and then I'm going to read something else which I think is very useful. J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. He started writing short stories in the late 1950s while working on a scientific journal. His first major novel, The Drown World, was published in 1962.

In 1964, while on holiday in Spain with their children, his wife died suddenly from pneumonia. his wife died suddenly from pneumonia and he famously brought up his three children in the semi-detached house in Shepparton where he lived for the rest of his life. Famously we have the Atrocity Exhibition, we have a novel called Crash, we have a novel called High Rise, we have Empire of the Sun that John was talking about. All the Class A that was turned into films. That's right. And so he died in 2009. I just want to add to that this excellent, I think,

synopsis of the different sorts of books that Ballard wrote. And this is from the obituary that appeared in The Guardian in 2009. Although best known for his 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun, his first fame in the early 1960s was as a science fiction writer, hailed by slightly older peers such as Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss. But within a decade or so, his reputation had modulated into that of an avant-garde provocateur, admired by visual artists and punk rockers. Another decade on, and he re-emerged as a great novelist of the Second World War experience with Empire of the Sun,

shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which lost to Anita Bruckner's Hotel Dulac. And winning his widest ever public. Yet another decade on, and he seemed to redefine himself as a special kind of crime writer. So we're now in the period of cocaine nights. One with a peculiar, sinister vision of late 20th century modernity that appealed particularly to the younger end of Britain's literary and arts scene. But I think that's an excellent summation.

And what, Rob, could you just say, you were saying to me earlier, so brilliantly, you know, the repetition of imagery in Ballard is something very deliberate, isn't it? And crops up where and when you least expect it. It seems to crop up, exactly. I mean, having read Empire of the Sun and the sequel to that, The Kindness of Women,

which is amazing. I think, as we were saying before Andy a lot of people didn't like these books because they unlocked the key, true Ballard fans felt that it had kind of given the secret code to the computer game and now everyone could complete it easily It's what John Lanchester said, it tipped off the normals

Yeah Unendearingly but anyway carry on. It is that thing you know and there was probably something similar to liking Joy Division about liking it it was liking the warts and all liking the trickiness of it liking the the the atonal quality of a lot of it and some of that is in the prose as well there is an atonal clinical sort of almost studiedly not dull but scientific as we said we was working on scientific journals especially in his scenes. We will come to this sex scene later on. Building it up.

I love it. The sex scenes in the kind of women and the sex scenes in, well, I suppose not in the Empire of the Sun. It's a bit young for that. Are clinical, are strange,

they're scientific. There are no cocks in it. They are glands and penises. Sex acts. There are labias and vulvas. There are no kind of... It reminds me of Ross in Friends, asked to name a rude word,

and he just goes, vulva. Crucial. Crucial bit is that he was a medical student. Yeah. And he writes in his autobiography, Miracles of Life, he writes about this... the secting faces in particular,

which is... It comes back again and again the ability to look at something and to look at it so closely that you lose the sense of it being what it is it's not a dead human face it's a landscape I think it's really interesting can I read what I would

put forward as an absolutely classic Ballard paragraph for anybody listening who doesn't know Ballard's work? But this comes on early in the book, but it's just, to me, this ticks a lot of Ballard boxes. The guy, the main character in the book, is a travel writer who will come onto the blurb. Already thinking of a travel article, I noted the features of this silent world,

the memory-erasing white architecture, the enforced leisure that fossilised the nervous system, the almost Africanised aspect, but a North Africa invented by someone who had never visited the Maghreb, the apparent absence of any social structure, the timelessness of a world beyond boredom, with no past, no future, and a diminishing present.

Perhaps this was what a leisure-dominated future would resemble. Nothing could ever happen in this affectless realm where entropic drift calmed the surfaces of a thousand swimming pools. Oh, yeah. Shiver up the spine, come on. By the way, thanks for reading the bit I was going to read. Oh, sorry. No, that's...

That is kind of... If you're going to distill Ballard, it's alive with ideas, but then you also... I mean, I sort of get what Meads is saying. He's not really... I think that's Meadsian. You were just saying there, John, about... I don't think that's bad writing, I have to say.

You were saying there, John, about Ballard's experience as a doctor and as a... Medical student. Medical student, sorry. And I just read a story this morning on the train on the way here from the terminal beach called The Drowned Giant, which I think it was completely extraordinary. And this is why I say my opinion and my feelings about Ballard have shifted all the time over the last month.

And if we were doing this, if we were recording this in a month's time, I think I would feel differently again. Because that story is clinically brilliant in terms of managing to anatomise the idea and the physical presence of this giant and then extrapolate from that all these other things that would happen it's so cleverly done

so neatly done as well and Rob you were saying so the short stories are where the train stops you off most of the time well you know I was asking people which Ballard I should read. I asked several Ballardians which Ballard I should read. And I think all suggestions were gratefully received.

Actually, the stories, I think, for me, were the... I wish I'd started with the stories. That would be the way in for me. We'll get back to Ten Nights in a Minute. Just one minute. We've got to do this because it's all part of setting the scene for people about Ballard himself. Rob, you mentioned that Ballard's ideas

come round again and that something that happened to him in 1946 might not be expressed until a book that was written 30 years later. Ballard also, as we talked about this book of interviews, is a brilliant talker. And I just want to play a clip now of Ballard. I think this is in 1989 or 1991. 89.

It's the first question of the interview. And the interviewer has come in with basically the worst ever question you can ask, right? Which is pretty much, where do you get your ideas from? Yeah, and so we're just going to listen to what Ballard weave magic out of air. Right, go. J.G. Ballard, more than any other writer that I read and enjoy,

you seem to me to invent worlds in your books. Where does all this stuff come from? Well, I'm an imaginative writer, obviously, and I think to be able to exercise an imagination over a long period of time, as I have done, one's got to be very well stocked in one's childhood with experiences of a pretty radical kind. And I think I was fortunate in my own case that I did have an extraordinary childhood. I think if my parents had decided, say,

not to go out to China in 1929 and I'd been born in a suburb of Manchester, I might never have become a writer at all, it's very hard to say. But I think in my own case, the very strange and exhilarating and in some ways very cruel world that Shanghai was fed my imagination. The extraordinary childhood, I think, I've been thinking about this since knowing I was going to come on here, I feel that

knowing all the things that happened to Ballard and also indirectly that his friends blamed him for. They blamed him for the corruption and destruction of their marriage or their cars or their lives or their brains or their health and well-being. Knowing what happened to Ballard,

I'm amazed his books aren't stranger than they are actually I think that there is that is a that is a classic a great interview question there which he was asked in the Paris Review I printed this out I think this was a really interesting interview that was done in with him in the early 1980s at home in Shepparton in his little semi that he lived in his whole life and he wrote in yeah the interviewer from the Paris Review asked so how do you write exactly and Ballard goes actually there's no secret one simply pulls the cork out of the bottle waits three minutes and two thousand or more years of Scottish craftsmanship does the rest we talked about this on backlisting before in terms of writers' routines. Ballard's famous routine was get the kids up, get them to school,

9am, first glass of whiskey of the day, to draw a psychic line. That's right, that's in here, yeah, very interesting. I know you've talked about Mason Curry's book, Writers' Rituals, or Daily Routines, and that's a fantastically interesting one, to draw a line between the prosaic and the... This is from an interview that Ballard did at the end of his life. He was asked about Crash, as he clearly was. Every interview he ever gave,

he was asked about Empire of the Sun and Crash, right? He says this, which I think is fascinating. He says, I regret it. I mean, now and again I open Crash and I think, my God, this is horrific. I mean, this man is clearly mad. And then, you know, it takes me a while to realise that the J.G. Ballard who brought up three very happy children and... I find it a shocking book to read.

I mean, I literally have to put it down and take a few breaths. In a way, it's a sort of psychopathic hymn there's almost a religious dimension to it in a peculiar way and i think i think i laid myself bare there in a way that i mean it's a cry of anguish yeah in a way it's a cry of outrage you know i felt it took me a long while to get over my wife's death. And it's something I was reminded of every day because I was making sausage and mash for her three children. Yeah. I think it was another attempt to make, you know, two and two equal five once you crack that particular nut.

If it's possible to do so, and you know, everything seems to be a bit easier, but I'm not sure it is. Wow. I mean, I thought that was pretty amazing, but the point is, and that is fabulous, John, I agree, that it takes him clearly many years to process things that have happened to him. 73?

Right, it's crashing 73. And towards the end of his life, he can look at it and say, I mean, I'm sure he's very proud of it, and he would also say it was his best book. He could close the cover on it. that it's the result of trauma yeah that's the thing i think people always often accuse ballard of being completely unemotional and there is that side in his prose and it is very much the prose of uh of someone of his era someone closing off their childhood possibly and being a medical student. But there is a huge amount of emotion and sadness and fervour boiling under the surface there.

But that's the whole point, I think, is being able to constrain it under this weird warped cloche. I think that is part of why I love Ballard so much, and especially Cocaine Nuts. So shall I read the blurb? Now we've arrived at Cocaine Nuts. What shall I read the blurb? Now we've arrived at Cocaine Nuts. What about the one from the original? Yeah, go on.

It might be the same, don't you? It won't be, it'll be longer. It is longer. It's not huge. The bottom bit is. I'll do it, I'll do it. Okay, let's do it. It's fine. We can, Matt can put a bit of reverb on it.

Or cut it out either to an outsider the retired British residents of the Spanish coastal resort of Estrella de Mar belong to an idyllic community enjoying a lifestyle of constant cultural and sporting activity and incidentally we must, memo to self

we must discuss the constant cultural activity that's one of the great things in this book based around the thriving club Nautico but the image is shattered when five people die in a mysterious house fire during a party attended by members of the club and the club's manager

Frank Prentice is arrested for murder arriving on the scene his brother Charles is shocked to find that though not even the police believe him capable of the crime frank is determined to plead guilty if he is to understand his brother's attitude charles senses that he must first unravel the mysteries of estrella demar for beneath the civilized surface lies a secret world of crime drugs and illicit sex orchestrated by a charismatic pied piper figure whose dark influence is spreading

with alarming speed okay that's the first two paragraphs and then this third paragraph has been printed in bold to uh to uh emphasis emphasis jg ballard is widely recognized as one of this country's most brilliant and distinctive novelists at the forefront of modern British fiction writing for over three decades. Now, drawing on the beguiling storytelling skills behind compelling novels like Empire of the Sun and Rushing to Paradise, and the imagination that produced such startlingly original works as The Crystal World, Crash and High Rise, he has created Cocaine Nights, at once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure someone needs a new thesaurus that's yeah most brilliant and distinctive is one of those yeah isn't it so wonderfully the

blurb on this modern edition you've got yeah is absolutely they took that and cut it down so it's got exactly the same last line on it has it yeah lazy lazy lazy well done fourth estate my publisher it's a lovely i like the new stanley donwood cover so yes oh yeah so that's a i think that's so that's the thing yeah so so as going back to the original um the original why did you pick up this book in the first place? It is that thing that my friend said it's kind of like a bad mystery on purpose but there's something beguiling about it. Why is it a bad mystery

on purpose? Because it's a funny, because it's not a very compelling murder story. Halfway through the book it's perfectly clear what's going on you know, it's not like a reveal on the, there is a bit of a twist at the end but it's perfectly clear what's going on it's not like reveal on the there is a bit of a twist at the end but it's barely a twist

there's a scene in an underground car park for the reveal the plot's denouement which would have a Scooby Doo writer with his head in his hands such is the such is both the predictability and the grind with which it's revealed.

Let's get out of here, Dr Paula Hamilton. Yeah. Oh, spoilers. I felt, Rob, that Ballard sort of got bored with writing the mystery about halfway through the book. Well, I think... What's he up to is really... This is the big question.

Yeah, I think the point is... I think this is... That's why I've wondered... I've argued with people about this, whether this is a genre novel or not, whether this is a crime novel, whether it's meant to be... I mean, it seems like it's meant to be

all ballardian tropes stuffed into a very loose sort of thriller-shaped bag bag and I suppose that's the thing so it kind of gives the reader it puts the reader off even more you're meant to be solving this thing but he's a ballard anti-hero he's a thinly disguised ballard you might say

they're always professional class they've always got enough money to rootle around they're always going across borders in fact the opening of the book is quite worth reading I think, maybe we'll do that in a second so these men go out into the world

and discover something awful and can't help getting up to their neck in it just as the water is about to break over their heads they realise they are finally happy because they have become this awful thing that they feared most. Also, I have to say, though,

as someone who's read a whole lot of Ballard in the last month, that this novel almost... This is a backhanded compliment, but it is a compliment. It seems to me Ballard is... Ballard is admirably unafraid of self-parody. The repetition of it. He's funny. He's not rated for being funny.

It's a deliberate artistic choice rather than a mistake. And in this novel, in Cocaine Nights, there are the character archetypes that you would expect to find. You just mentioned the protagonist. Right. Right. Absolutely. But there's also a messianic figure. They tend to crop up in Balog.

Yeah, he helps. That's right. This one is a messianic tennis pro called Bobby Crawford. There's a disillusioned psychologist. They pop up in Balog. There's one of those called Dr. Sanger. And there's a sexy doctor called Dr. Sanger and there's a there's the muse as well a sexy

doctor Dr. Paula Hamilton a young lady doctor Dr. Paula Hamilton Dr. Paula Hamilton we're getting any minute now we're getting to that sex scene

and that I I it strikes me that okay I I'm a sceptic

I'm a sceptic and because I'm a scept i i read that and i don't get a thrill of pleasure at recognizing um a thing that i would find in a jg ballard novel i i get a slight sense of ennui and irritation at finding this thing i would find in a jg ballard yeah well where do we sit on novelists that write similar books over and again, and they, you know... Who did he lose out to, the booker?

Oh, it was Anita Brookner. Oh, yeah. But there is something about feeling that you're in a warm bath of stuff that you like, and you wonder if they're going to do it better, worse... That's such a good point because of course I would say about Anita Bruckner because I like Anita Bruckner

that she never wrote the same book twice she chose her repertoire of imagery and characters and she shifted them around. Exactly what one would say about J.D. Ballard if one liked J.D. Ballard. Referee John Mitchinson.

I think the mystery here, in a way, is, and it's important to say, that there are three books at the end of Ballard's career that are his longest books. Cocaine Nights, Super Can, and Millennium People. And they are quite remarkably

similar in their structure. They're all apparently thrillers. They're all kind of... But, I mean, I should say I really enjoyed Cocaine Nights. I enjoyed it even though I felt if I was a purist, you know, a Ruth Rendell, P.D. James purist, it kind of... it was a pretty hopeless mystery as a film

but because it's Ballard I'm just fascinated to why he chose a genre in order to what he really wants to write about is what he always wants to write about which is the future what technology is doing to the human psyche

there's a great little bit towards the end where he talks about the formula. He stumbled on the first and last truth about the leisure society and perhaps all societies. I mean, no, this is a thriller, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What? Even Raymond Chandler didn't do that.

Crime and creativity go together and always have done okay if you say so um the greater the sense of crime the greater the civic awareness and the rich of the civilization nothing else binds a community together it's a strange paradox now this is towards the end of you know we're getting on for the demure is this is this is towards the end of we're getting on for the demotion is that prose? no that's a character speaking that's Bobby is it? yeah that's Bobby I asked a friend of mine when I told my friend I was going to be doing this

he's a guy I hope he's listening Darren Riley on Twitter whose Twitter handle is Pancho Ballard because he loves JJ Ballard so much I said oh man we're doing Cocaine Nights. And he said, oh, I'll read that again. Great. I haven't read it for years.

He read it. Thanks, Darren. And he said, I said, what's it like? And he went, horizontal high rise. Very good. And there's a line here on page 304, which the disillusioned psychiatrist says capital d capital i cataleptic patients wake up and begin to dance they laugh cry speak and seem to recover their real selves but the dosage must be increased to the point where it will kill we

know what medicine crawford prescribes this is a social economy based on drug dealing, theft, pornography and escort services. From top to bottom, a condominium of crime. It's the High Rise, explicit High Rise image. When did High Rise come out? Because High Rise is earlier, isn't it? No, it was in the late 70s. What interests me, I think...

Look, we should just say a we should say a couple of things. It's a crazy title. It's a crazy title. Well, can I also say, he's no fool, though. He's crazy like a fox, John. Because Cocaine Nights is like his third best-selling book. I know, but there's an introduction that we slightly disagree. I think it's a brilliant introduction by James Lever to the Flamenco edition. Andy doesn't like it, because what basically James Lever says is,

oh, Ballard, I love Ballard, the conceptual coup of this book. He's writing a thriller, but it's Ballardian. Ding! And I kind of buy that. Ballard's too clever a writer. He calls it Cocaine Nights, which is a kind of, it's a dime, you know, it's an airport novel title, which it works. It's got nothing to do with drugs, this book, really.

I mean, they're in there. But what it's to do, and then the other thing that I love, the amazing chapter titles. Oh, chapter titles. They're just brilliant. Rob, could you read the chapter titles as they appear? Or just a collection, because they're so good. A game of tease and chase. Yeah, well, chapter three, The Tennis Machine. Or just a collection, because they're so good. A game of tease and chase.

Chapter three, The Tennis Machine. An incident in the car park. A gathering of the clan. Fraternal refusals. An attack on the balcony. Criminals and benefactors. The bureaucracy of crime. The psychopath.

The psychopath is saying, I love my last watch. It's great. The syndicates of guilt. The syndicates of guilt is a good point as well isn't it it's the james harvey novel yeah the plot is half inch from um so what is he express is he is he has he created the kind of carapace of a thriller in order to smuggle in all his ballardian obsessions which is what i think so i think if you if you don't like that I think. So I think if you don't like that, and I think you're saying that you don't like it,

then I can see why you don't like it. Okay. It's 330 pages long. Conceptually, you could do this. You could get all that imagery in, in 30 pages. Annie Miller. It is spread fish.

I think... That brings into... It brings into question, though, doesn't it? What is fiction for? Oh! I mean... Here we go. If it's just, you're right,

if it's just, what were you trying to say in this book? And here's a sheet of paper. You could have said it a lot quicker than that. Yeah mean he's he's why create the characters i mean they are all stock characters it's about a fire that the house burns down we we kind of figure out what's gone on fairly but i do think structure i don't think it's structurally as bad as i mean you know there is some there is some. Yeah, and it's the characters. It is. It's a room for the characters to play around in.

Bobby Crawford is the one. Having read around and having re-read Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, I think this is almost a pain and a biography of his friend David Hunter that crops up in Empire of the Sun, who is the young boy that is the first boy, he's the one that tries to break out, and he's the one that messes around in front of Sergeant Nagata

and is always trying to be punished. He later crops up in The Kindness of Women, and he wants prostitutes, when they're hanging out in Canada, in the RAF, he wants to be thrashed by the prostitutes he hires, and he wants to play all these weird games. And he is the person also in The Colours of Women who is the person behind, who is Travis in Crash. And in real life, he drove,

he used to chase Ballard around the streets of London at around the time that Ballard was doing the car crash exhibition at the ICA. And he used to try to drive him off the road and he had to hide in garages and put the thing there. It's amazing and that is all in Cocaine Night. So I think Bobby Crawford is this David Hunter

figure and this is the first time he's written him out of his system. I would like to say as well, I'd like to add in my defence that I really thought the Atrocity exhibition was brilliant. I mean, very difficult to read, but I like things that are difficult to read. And again, I say this in the best possible way,

it was like reading a conceptual art installation. That its narrative, it's a really successful attempt to ditch narrative but still hold something together as a novel through imagery and through an idea or several ideas

banging into one another. Another reason to like Ballard, he really loves Marbella. He used to go and stay in Marbella all the time. So when you think that, oh, this is a dark satire on these empty lives that people

he was the person that lapped it up like Charles Prentiss does in the book that's one of the things I like about what about the sexy can we get straight to the sexy can we make Rob wait and then make him read this sexy read a bit that you want

I'd quite like to read the opening paragraph and then we'll come to the sex scene. I think we've got to have the main course before the pudding, haven't we? As it were. So, chapter one of Cocaine Nights, Frontiers and Fatalities. Crossing frontiers is my profession. Those strips of no man's land between the checkpoints always seem such zones of promise,

rich with the possibilities of new lives, new scents and affections. At the same time, they set off a reflex of unease that I've never been able to repress. As the customs officials rummage through my suitcases, I sense them trying to unpack my mind and reveal a contraband of forbidden dreams and memories. And even then, there are the special pleasures of being exposed, which may well have made me a professional tourist. I earn my living as a travel writer, but I accept that this is little more than a masquerade.

My real luggage is rarely locked, its catches eager to be sprung. Yeah, and there is a bit of the playing with the genre, there is a bit of knowingly joshing about with the genre. You sort of gumshoe-y type sort of stuff as well. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Page 193. And now you're in Estrella de Mar.

Perhaps it's your first real home. I think it is. I've stopped feeling depressed here. She smiled like a contented child when I moved onto her back and kissed her eyes. I began to caress her, stroking her clitoris until she parted her thighs and steered my fingers into her vagina. Quote, that's nice.

Don't forget my anus. Now, raw. It's like being on trial. It's brilliant. I put it to you. I met someone. I said, to you. I met someone. I said, they said,

I'm doing the podcast. What books have you got coming up? I said, oh, I'm doing Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard. They said, oh,

Cocaine Nights, Don't Forget My Anus. I said, when we read that, my wife and I have referred to that book ever afterwards as J.G. Ballard's

Don't Forget My Anus. And I would have to say this is the worst sex scene I have ever read in my life. Come on, Rob. Come on. And it's deliberately bad because J.G. Ballard was a genius. Yeah.

As it says in the introduction. Andy, what is interesting is, so Charles Prentiss in Cocaine Nights has sex with Frank Prentiss, his brother's girlfriend, basically. Again, this happens in The Kindness of Women. I don't know whether this is true or not, because this is the thinly disguised autobiography of The Kindness of Women.

When his wife Mary dies of pneumonia in Spain, which he kept on visiting, he kept on returning to the trouble spots of his life. Yeah, it's interesting. In the book, in the novel at least, he straightaway has sex with um well while the husband-in-law is out taking the kids to the zoo he's on the job with his with his wife his recently deceased wife's um sister so there is all and so this pops up again so that's the thing

i think i think this book brings out all the obsessions and and and might plop them into a slightly loose, thrillerish pool, but everything is in there. That's why. I feel like I'm putting, I feel like this is a debate and I'm having to put my case.

No, no, no. I think it's about, I found it complete, I found it completely fascinating and I'm not, what I'm not doing, I'm thinking like this, pains to say this,

right? I think Ballard was totally fascinating, right? Clearly incredibly important, incredibly interesting, incredibly interesting. But I didn't want to come and talk about this with you, Rob, having not done my homework. Because what's the point of coming on here? But it is interesting. The point is it's an interesting thing because you're right in a way.

What is Ballard doing? I remember once writing an essay about the four quartets when I was a student, and I tried to make the case that the third poem, which I didn't like very much, the Dry Sauvages, I think it's pronounced, I'm sure I'll get corrected, but it's the one that says, I don't know very much about gods. I basically said that T.S. Eliot was writing intentionally bad poetry as part of the overall aesthetic scheme of the poem, that this poem needed to be less good.

And my tutor rather brilliantly said, I think we both know that T.S. Eliot isn't that kind of poet. Just totally. Instead of sitting there and, yeah, I'm sorry, I'll rewrite that bit, I'm sorry. Was it quite a big pause? It was quite a really, it was just, he's pressed his hands together and looked at me sort of more in pity than kind of, you know, angry. An almost ecclesiastical bollocking.

But that's the thing, isn't it? Was Ballard, did Ballard mean to write a bad sex scene because kind of he was writing a pulp trying to do parody pulp fiction Matthew Clayton

do you have what I would call a tenuous link I do have a tenuous link so what's the tenuous link between Ian Fleming and J.G. Ballard both published by Cape

true but that's not it no and J.G. Ballard. Both published by Cape. True, but... That's not it. No. Is it an F? Is it a services thing? No, but it's around high-rise. Is it? Oh, I know.

Is it Goldfinger, the architect? Yes, it is. Yeah, it's Goldfinger. So do you know the story? So the story is... So Trellick Tower is kind of the basis for High Rise, which is the... Is it?

One of the buildings that Erno Goldfinger built, who is the most famous brutalist architect, I guess. Brutalist architect. He's got that one on the Elephant and Castle roundabout. Yeah. And he also built a house, I think in Hampstead. It is, yeah. That Ian Fleming hated, and so he called... Gold I think in Hampstead. It is, yeah. That Ian Fleming hated.

And so he called... Goldfinger in the... Yeah. That was Hagar the baddie. Which is kind of wonderfully petty, I think. I thought you were going to say... Who's the... I thought you were going to...

I thought you were going to say it was because... Who's the actor in the film of High Rise? The lead? Damien Lewis? No. Tom Hiddleston? Tom Hiddleston. It's the new Bond.

Hiddleston was going to be the new Bond, you see, I thought. They say it's anyone that's put a suit on in a film. And it's vaguely... It's true. It's absolutely true. They say a new Bond. And of course Woody Allen has been James Bond. Of course. In Casino Royale. Even Woody Allen they say a new Bond and of course Woody Allen has been James Bond of course

in Casino Royale even Woody Allen circle of sweat little Jimmy Bond so long suckers so I've told this story on the podcast before but I can't

we can't finish without telling it again which is I met J.G. Ballard so and J.G. Ballard is a I can say this is what he'm so mean about

he's a lovely man we did a signing at Waterstones Kensington High Street and it was a Saturday afternoon it wasn't a reading it was just a signing and JG Ballard turned up he's very nice

we sat him down at the signing table and no members of the public came. And the manager made all the staff, including us, go out the fire escape with our coats on. Come round the front. Buy copies. Get them signed. So after we'd done that, and still nobody came, JG Bellard was very, he was lovely about it. He was very nice about it.

And he went, I don't think this is really working. I think I'll go home. That's fine. That's fine. And off he went. And literally within two minutes, a black cab screeched to a halt outside the shop and out of the back jumped Brian Ferry

with an enormous pile of J.G. Ballard books that he had brought to get signed. And we had to go, sorry, mate, he's gone home. that he had brought to get signed. And we had to go, sorry, mate, he's gone home. Listen, I've got one last thing to say. And then I'm done.

And then I'm done. Right, okay, listen. So my thing about Ballard is why... Right, so... When I said I was reading Cocaine Nights, it was liked by 15 people on Twitter 13 of whom were men I have like a 50-50

as far as I can work out so it's a very unscientific survey but it did occur to me that it's very bloated I think you're right liking Ballard is very like and I'm not immune to the bloke virus it's like liking The Fall it's like a series of a slightly strange man who drinks a lot,

who lives in the suburbs, who has a certain number of images that he repeats over and over again, who also has the sort of fans who catalogue everything that he does. I was looking at the brilliant Ballardian website. Amazing. No one's ever going to do a website like that for Penelope Lively. But it's sort of like...

Can someone do that now? It's Ballard. It's football and the clash for men who go to the ICA. It's man ICA. There's the porn and there's the car thing. There's the whole kind of, it's like Top Gear.

But more, but more. And he's coming in strong at the end here. Jeez. But it's not like Top Gear because that's actually enjoyed by women. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's sort of, to bring it up to date, I think it's almost, you can see why people like jonathan meads like it and adam curtis and these kind of auteurs of of the of a strange idea of subjective of objectivity which is a very subjective idea of of objectivity i think it's surrealist i think people sometimes feel that it's surrealist i know he's a fan of surrealism in fact the money that he got from

from um uh from empire of the sun the film empire of the sun, he had a Paul Delvaux, the Belgian surrealist painter, he had a Paul Delvaux painting, a perfect replica, if you like, painted in oils, and that was the one painting that I think hung in his writing room in Shepperton. So there are also all these things... He was a huge Francis Bacon fan. I mean, his early stories, he said, were unreadable. He was sort of Joyce Joycean kind of complexity.

But, I mean, I think the very fact that we've had such an... I mean, whatever you say about Ballard, he stimulates really interesting discussion. Because the ideas in Cocaine Nights, you know, this idea of this community and the basic idea that you have to seed crime into paradise... We didn't even get onto the amateur dramatics and the fact that they were doing...

Don't forget my Pinter. They were doing Pinter and Joe Orton. Yeah, yeah. I think he is a remarkable writer. And I think if you buy Ballard, The Genius, then you'll enjoy Cocaine Nights. You know what? I have to say Rob I

have enjoyed reading this stuff and being sometimes really stimulated by it and sometimes really infuriated by it probably more than anything we've done for Batlisted genuinely sincerely it's been fantastic

to immerse oneself Matthew took the piss out of me last time i said this but i really believe that you shouldn't be a prisoner of your own taste yeah otherwise you get stranded right and and it was one of the joys of this podcast really challenging for me to get into this so thank you very much i really don't get standing on your concrete island. We don't want that. You're going to crash your jacket. Can I leave with one last bit of information? Yes. J.G. Ballard's first choice of music, piece of music on Desert Island Discs,

was the Teddy Bears Picnic. And this was in the days when Sue Lawley did it. And when she drops the needle on the old, it sounds like it was a 78, and it was something that Ballard had at Amherst Avenue in Shanghai, where he grew up. And it's that, when the music, when the needle drops, it goes, if you go down to the woods today,

you're in for a big surprise. And you just go, oh, God, it all started there. Brilliant. It's, yeah, frightening stuff. Well, that's no better place, I think, for us to stop. Thanks to Rob, to our producer Matt Hall, to our sponsors Unbound.

You can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, on Facebook at BacklistedPod, and on our Unbound site at unbound.com forward slash Backlisted. Thank you for listening, and don't forget my English. See you in a fortnight. Bye.

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