Cocaine Nights
by J. G. Ballard | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 1582430179 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 1582430179 Global Overview for this book
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
First published 1996.
In Cocaine Nights, J. G. Ballard explodes one of the modern myths of utopian paradise — early retirement, a place in the sun, a vibrant community, and plentiful leisure. The narrator Charles Prentice has traveled to the retirement resort of Estrella del Mar on the Costa del Sol, Spain, to try and clear his brother Frank, who has confessed to an arson attack that left five people dead. Neither he nor many of the residents believe that Frank is guilty. Prentice discovers that until recently the expatriate community was adrift in a haze of tranquilizers and alcohol but then seemed to undergo a kind of cultural renaissance. Investigating further, he finds that the catalyst for this explosion of creative activity is a series of petty crimes and an underground trade in drugs and pornography orchestrated by the local tennis coach.
Ballard uses the conventions of the detective thriller genre to probe the links between creativity and transgression, the paralyzing boredom of achieving what we are told we should want, and the role of “sacrificial” deaths, all with a persistent background hum of ambient fear, Written in Ballard’s trademark deadpan prose, the novel unnerves in its ability to manipulate the reader into accepting the “deviant logic” that it demonstrates lies at the heart of the consumerist dream. — Simon Stevenson in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
In Cocaine Nights, J. G. Ballard explodes one of the modern myths of utopian paradise — early retirement, a place in the sun, a vibrant community, and plentiful leisure. The narrator Charles Prentice has traveled to the retirement resort of Estrella del Mar on the Costa del Sol, Spain, to try and clear his brother Frank, who has confessed to an arson attack that left five people dead. Neither he nor many of the residents believe that Frank is guilty. Prentice discovers that until recently the expatriate community was adrift in a haze of tranquilizers and alcohol but then seemed to undergo a kind of cultural renaissance. Investigating further, he finds that the catalyst for this explosion of creative activity is a series of petty crimes and an underground trade in drugs and pornography orchestrated by the local tennis coach.
Ballard uses the conventions of the detective thriller genre to probe the links between creativity and transgression, the paralyzing boredom of achieving what we are told we should want, and the role of “sacrificial” deaths, all with a persistent background hum of ambient fear, Written in Ballard’s trademark deadpan prose, the novel unnerves in its ability to manipulate the reader into accepting the “deviant logic” that it demonstrates lies at the heart of the consumerist dream. — Simon Stevenson in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
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Journal Entry 3 by Vasha at Collegetown Bagels, 203 North Aurora St. in Ithaca, New York USA on Sunday, October 25, 2015
