Millenium People

by J.G. Ballard

Parce qu'il veut connaître la vérité sur l'attentat qui a coûté la vie à son ex-femme, le psychologue David Markham infiltre un mouvement clandestin curieusement basé dans le quartier résidentiel cossu de la «Marina de Chelsea». Sous l'égide d'un médecin charismatique, ce groupuscule cherche à tirer les classes moyennes de leur torpeur et à les libérer de leur prétendue servitude. Markham se trouve rapidement embarqué dans une série d'actions d'éclat qui prend des proportions alarmantes lorsque les symboles mêmes de l'Angleterre bourgeoise sont pris pour cible et que la révolte grande dans la capitale... En dénonçant la brutalité et la vacuité de nos vies, Millenium People revient sur les thèmes de prédilection de Ballard : les mythes médiatiques et la crise de la société d'abondance. Un roman magistral et prophétique, plein de folie, de noirceur et d'humour.
Biographie de l'auteur

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, British Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Dystopia, 21st Century

480 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

James Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories (or "condensed novels") such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg.

While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.

The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Don't be fooled. This might look like a group of Brits posing for a photo before they hop on a bus to shop at their local mall or break up into groups to discuss their favorite P. D. James or Anthony Trollope, but in J. G. Ballard's Millennium People they are about to set off a string of car bombs, dirty bombs and Molotov cocktails throughout their suburban gated community as a first step to igniting violent revolution.



Oh, how J. G. Ballard despised the contemporary world with particular ferocity. I can imagine the British authors he especially found repugnant - the names that come immediately to mind: Agatha Christie and R. F. Delderfield. He told an interviewer: "The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters."

In this 2003 novel published when the author was age 73, there is no global cataclysm taking the form of mass flooding (The Drowning World) or water shortage (The Drought), not even a catastrophic accident (The Crash) or bizarre predicament (Concrete Island). Quite the opposite – the well-to-do residents of a London suburb who are the focus of Millennium People live in much the same way affluent suburbanites have lived for many decades: well-tended yards, polished cars, dinner parties, cappuccino, professional schedules, all taking place in predictable, subdued security.

And that’s precisely the point. After J. G. was forced to stomach a lifetime of English upper middle-class blandness, enough was enough. In this novel our British man of letters targets the suburban lifestyle just as it is, pointing his literary dart gun and zinger-darts of caustic wit, searing irony, gallows humor and acid satire at everything his English brethren hold near and dear.

Here's how Ballard frames his tale: narrator David Markham, a clinical psychologist, and his wife Sally are at Heathrow Airport when a bomb explodes on a baggage carousel. Shortly thereafter David learns his former wife Laura is among the casualties. David agrees to assist the police in their investigation of the terrorists responsible for Laura’s death.

I can see how many readers of Millennium People might be put off. What sounds like the makings of a crime thriller is anything but. At various points David Markham says he's eager to locate Laura’s killers but his efforts to this end are mostly wishy–washy. The story quickly shifts to David’s morbid fascination and association with suburbanites who have organized into terrorist cells hell-bent on abolishing the twentieth century by seemingly meaningless acts of violence.

Does all this sound utterly preposterous, even silly? I mean, take another gander at the above gaggle of Brits. Do these men and women strike you as the type of people capable of planting deadly bombs or instigating a series of riots? Therein lies the major thrust of the tale: the author is asking us to join him in exploring such a possibility, as improbable and ludicrous as it might seem. And here's several snapshots of three of the cappuccino sipping anarchists in action:

Guerilla Gal: Kay Churchill is a key member of our Volvo-driving terrorists. Ballard gives this college film studies instructor a fully rounded character, spanning the range from prickly, perceptive antiestablishmentarian to complete psychotic nutcase. Kay on film noir: “Black is a very sentimental colour. You can hide any rubbish behind it. Hollywood flicks are fun, if your idea of a good time is a hamburger and a milk shake. America invented the movies so it would never need to grow up. We have angst, depression and middle-aged regret. They have Hollywood.”

In order to stir the upper crust mental sludge, Kay walks door-to-door in a ritzy neighborhood posing as someone conducting a survey for a polling company. As part of on-the-job training and incentive to join their cause, she has David accompany her. The various interactions and David’s take on this whole business make for gut-busting hilarity. Here’s a sampling of Kay’s questions to these gin drinking Mercedes owners: “Personal grooming lies at the heart of people’s sense of who they are. Would your family consider washing less often?” “So, would you favour legislation banning dinner parties?” “So you’d sign a petition to revoke laws against sexual intercourse with animals?” “Tell me, sir, how would you feel about Spray-on Mud? An effective way of impressing people in the office car park on Monday mornings. A quick spray on the wheels of your car and your colleagues will think of rose pergolas and thatched cottages.” And J. G.'s title for this chapter: The Heart of Darkness. Did I mention searing irony and gallows humor?

But David's next outing with Kay Churchill isn't nearly as pleasant. Stopping her car in front of a video store, Kay hands David a few overdue video cassettes with instructions to quickly place them back on the shelves and then leave. Once in the video store, David takes his time, even stopping to read a video box. Such hesitation almost costs David his life. Boom! Boom! Boom! As David learns the hard way, Kay takes her terrorist group's violent, murderous agenda seriously - those overdue videos were really time bombs.

Pissed-off Pastor: The Reverend Stephen Dexter is on fire with the need to change people's attitudes. "Human beings aren't meant to be comfortable. We need tension, stress, uncertainty." And the good Reverend envisions tension, stress and uncertainty on a grand scale since his target for violent transformation is the biggest of all: the twentieth century. Gotta revolution, baby! Oh, my, things have come a long way in England since Anthony Trollope had Warden Septimus Harding play his cello.

Mr. Big: You might well ask: who is this group's leader? Introducing Doctor Richard Gould, seasoned pediatrician. Ballard fans familiar with Bobby Crawford from the author's Cocaine Nights will recognize how J. G. has a genius for creating an irresistible, charismatic charmer with a thirst for power and bending others to his will. David questions Gould prior to the next round of violence: "Do we need to go that far? Burt Lancaster, Bogart, Lauren Bacall . . . they're just movie actors." Richard Gould's breezy reply: "Just? They poisoned a whole century. They rotted your mind, David. We have to make a stand, build a saner England."

I've just touched on a few facets. There's the drama David has with wife Sally, death at the Tate Modern, storming the BBC, stampede and riot at a mall and much, much more. And so many quotable lines. Here's a quartet:

“Remember, the police are neutral - they hate everybody.”

“When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.”

“Either the world is at fault, or we’re looking for meaning in the wrong places.”

“The city was a vast and stationary carousel, forever boarded by millions of would-be passengers who took their seats, waited and then dismounted.”


British author J. G. Ballard, 1930-2009

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He was trying to find meaning in the most meaningless times, the first of new kind of desperate man who refuses to bow before the arrogance of existence and the tyranny of space-time."
- J.G. Ballard, Millennium People



"A vicious boredom ruled the world, for the first time in human history, interrupted by meaningless acts of violence."
- J.G. Ballard, Millennium People



I read a Ballard novel amazed at how accurately he captures the now. It has been said by others before, but he really is our PKD. He captures, in this book, random shootings, Brexit, and Trump. He captures perfectly the rebellion of the middle-class. I have to let this book settle in me. I might be a bit too enthusiastic in this moment. But God this novel was grand. One of my top 5 Ballard novels, and the man can hardly write a bad novel.

[lark benobi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the seventh book I've read this month for my J.G. Ballard binge and I've decided it's going to be my last because I'm building up a residue of a theme, from these novels, that links them, and that is amplified with each next novel; a theme that might be condensed as "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world."

As with every other Ballard novel I've read this month, Ballard's prose here is unique and flabbergasting (if that's a word). Nearly every sentence he writes is a condensed, nearly psychedelic rendering of a nihilistic and yet somehow excruciatingly beautiful worldview.

A bitter poetry that makes no apologies.

I feel like I've been flayed.

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining tale, funny at times, occasionally prescient, imaginative but ultimately a little too silly for my taste.

The plot of the novel revolves around a gated estate in Fulham called Chelsea Marina, where a professional middle class population is increasingly being squeezed financially by the cost of living and rapacious landlords, making them vulnerable to the maverick agitator Dr Richard Gould and his revolutionary ideas. Their protests are witnessed by the narrator David Markham, a psychologist who starts investigating them after his ex-wife is killed by a bomb at Heathrow Airport and becomes deeply involved in the movement. We know from the start that the protests and the resulting clashes with the police became pretty extreme because the first chapter has Markham returning to the estate in the aftermath of the final confrontation, but Ballard still manages some shocks and surprises along the way.

My reservations were partly that it was all a bit too thrillerish for my taste, but also because I am British and I remember the period Ballard is talking about. While he is right that the righteous anger of the middle classes can sometimes get extreme and spill over into violence, I didn't believe that they would spontaneously join an uprising with no political ideas or financial vested interests behind it. Some of Ballard's influences are transparent, for example the apparently murder of a minor television personality at her home is clearly a mildly fictionalised account of the Jill Dando case. The Hungerford massacre was also crucial to Gould's psychological make-up, but that was the action of an individual loner - I understand that Ballard is partly motivated by trying to understand what motivates such extreme and random actions. Ballard's view of Britain is overwhelmingly white, middle-class and London-centric, and conventional politics is almost entirely absent from his narrative, as is any form of external agitation or religious motivation.

An interesting book, so thanks to Lark for choosing it for a discussion in the 21st Century Literature group.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trade Secret

In the new feature film co-produced by BBC and HBO, "Millennium People", writer and director Russell T Davies has assembled an all star cast that will appeal to aficionados of both "Dr Who" and "Years and Years".

Rory Kinnear plays gullible psychologist David Markham, Jodie Whittaker features as his sometime wife Sally, and Emma Thompson stars as the revolutionary former-film studies lecturer, Kay Churchill...

Whisky Sours and Armageddon

For many (at least ten) years before his death in 2009, JG Ballard seems to have known or suspected something about the propensity of the English middle class for violence that has taken a long time to manifest itself in the public consciousness.

Until recently, in the world of this novel, the bourgeoisie were pillars of the establishment and the capitalist status quo:

“The people here are gripped by a powerful illusion, the whole middle class dream. It's all they live for – liberal education, civic responsibility, respect for the law. They may think they're free, but they're trapped and impoverished...They police themselves, not with guns and gulags, but with social codes.”

In “Cocaine Nights", the residents of gated communities embrace violence as a relief from boredom.

In “Millennium People", Chelsea's middle class professionals stage a violent revolution against double yellow lines (that limit their right to park on the street in front of their homes), high mortgage payments, and prohibitive private school fees:

“This is Kropotkin with pink gins and wall-to-wall Axminster. These people want to change the world, use violence if they need to, but they've never had the central heating turned off in their lives...The middle classes have moved from charity work and civil responsibility to fantasies of cataclysmic change. Whisky sours and Armageddon...”

This is no ideologically-based revolution on behalf of the oppressed working class. It's a self-interested protest against their own economic plight:

“We're all locked into huge mortgages. People have sky-high school fees, and the banks breathing down their necks. Besides, where do we move to? Darkest Surrey? Some two-hour commute to Reading or Guildford?”

The Lumpenbourgeoisie

This sampling of the middle class lives in the Chelsea Marina (modelled on Chelsea Harbour), a prestigious inner city London development in Fulham and Chelsea “to the south of the King’s Road and, to my mind, the heart of another kind of darkness".

The residents are accountants, architects, bank managers, dentists, lawyers and lecturers, whose real complaint is that they aren't as comfortable and wealthy as their upper middle class peers.

They think of themselves as a new proletariat, whereas they are really a salaried, lower middle class, who struggle to afford the borrowed price of the aspirational investments promoted by consumer society. They drive BMW’s, Volvos, Saabs and Range Rovers, when they would prefer to have a Mercedes Benz, or a Porsche (and no debt).

Society's Keel and Anchor

The paradox is that, historically, these people were “knowledge-based professionals”, an “educated professional class who were society's keel and anchor...Nature had bred the middle class to be docile, virtuous and civic-minded.”

Now they have become “traitors to the civil order", and “the vanguard of an itinerant middle class, a new tribe of university-trained gypsies who knew their law and would raise hell with local councils.”

This part of the middle class is a lumpenbourgeoisie, a “new proletariat, the victims of a centuries-old conspiracy, at last throwing off the chains of duty and civic responsibility...You're just a prole in a three-button suit.” Their middle class rebellion is “a rejection of middle class life”:

“People are resigning from well-paid jobs, refusing to pay their taxes, taking their children out of private schools.”

“Cabinet ministers were now well aware that if the middle class withdrew their goodwill, society would collapse.”

A Feel for the Subversive

Chelsea Marina has become a “harbour of lost hopes". The inhabitants have started to destroy their own possessions in protest. They have “lit bonfires of books and paintings, educational toys and videos,” firegutted their own BMW's and Volvo's, and burned down their own homes. They have “quietly discarded their world as if putting out their rubbish for collection.”

David Markham meets some of the leaders of the revolution, and gets involved on the periphery:

“You've obviously got a feel for the subversive...Social unrest always throws up a few really dangerous types. People who use extreme violence to explore themselves, like some people use extreme sex...An inexplicable act of violence had a fierce authenticity that no reasoned behaviour could match...Inexplicable and senseless protests were the only way to hold the public's attention.”

David is initially seduced by the rationale of the revolution, but ultimately realises that its appeal is illusory and dangerous. He returns home to the security of St John's Wood. At least, he doesn't end up back at his grandmother's home in Guildford.

Prophecy or Observation?

As usual, it's hard to tell whether Ballard's utopian vision is prophetic or simply observant.

Just this week, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, somebody abandoned their brand new Audi across the street from our home (right over the top of the two yellow lines). If the police don't remove it by the end of the month, I might have to burn it.


SOUNDTRACK:

The Clash - "London's Burning"

https://youtu.be/TCw9_avTlYs

Robyn Hitchcock - "No, I Don't Remember Guildford"

https://youtu.be/kJScQBp1Yyk

[Fede · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's painful to compare Ballard's second to last novel to the masterpieces of his best years, namely the decade between - approximately - 1965 to 1975. This novel in particular is so weak it almost reads like the author was impersonating himself while writing it, as if he were trying too hard to be 'ballardian' without really succeeding.

The story is silly and neither the characters nor the dialogues are convincing. One doesn't get what the protagonists' point is, what their motives actually are: from beginning to end they just seem to be there for the sake of it, while their interactions are shallow and their personal backgrounds unlikely.
All in all, this one was quite disappointing.

Ballard is one of my favorite authors, but the unevenness of his oeuvre is to be taken into account. I'd recommend his earlier novels and short stories instead of his late work.

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pressure Drop
Weirdish, drifty tour of turn-of-century London, a future-now drama where everything is wound a little too tightly for words. Which is fine, as we are subject here to nothing less than harrowing, relentless, millennial dread, and at epidemic levels.

War Ina Babylon
Ballard wants to do --surprise-- a world out of balance, that creaks and shrieks and runs off the tracks wherever it possibly can. On the one hand a millennial, 9-11-adjacent dystopia, and on the other an older author's disaffectionate look at a generation and country no longer remotely his own.

Because it is Ballard, though, we have a layered contradiction of themes, counterbalanced by a fairly direct storyline and lucid prose that carries us along. And we'll need it, with our endlessly gullible narrator, a compulsive, chronic empath who seems intentionally to miss the likely motive at hand. This leaves the reader to assemble a more-plausible storyline, and hope that the narrator catches on. Which is a fairly unwieldy method of having the tail wag the dog.

There Is No Guidance In Your Kingdom
Simply put, the situation is that the middle classes have decided to revolt against their own milieu, their own stylish urban satisfactions and lifestyle. Condos burn, Volvos are piled into barricades, targets for 'actions' are considered, but only if they are truly meaningless enough. The Tate Modern and the National Film Theatre (pandering as it does to rosy Shepperton/Ealing hollywoodisms) are selected as faux-culture targets to be firebombed. Even Travel Agencies are terrorized:

"Tourism is the great soporific. It's a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there's something interesting in their lives. It's musical chairs in reverse. Every time the muzak stops people stand up and dance around the world, and more chairs are added to the circle, more marinas and Marriott hotels, so everyone thinks they're winning... All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same piña colada bullshit. The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they're happy. But the suntans hide who they really are--salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy of the 2oth Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself."

Who The Cap Fit, Let Him Wear It
Virtually everyone in the novel is enmeshed in some collective millennial crisis, preoccupied with everyone else's pathology, as they see it from their privileged perch in society. One keeps waiting for the sting in the tail, the poisonous element that, well, never really comes.

The incongruous business at hand, with the entitled classes in flagrant opposition to their own values, really never settles as a possibility. The comfortable, Range-Rovered new-urbanites tending their adulterous affairs and helicoptering their children-- have no poison in them, and offer no conceivable threat. I kept having the feeling that the ladies of Ab-Fab might take on this revolution, bottles of Stoli and cartons of Dunhills at the ready, but that it might be difficult to have it catch on.

And so it proves, in spite of the author's better efforts to try and wind the whole thing up-- by having all of it, the revolution, the recognition of the falseness of the surroundings, the dread-- attempt to eat its own tail. Narratively speaking. (perhaps dangled in clarified butter and followed on by a chilled flute of something seasonal, citrusy and white...)

Get Up, Stand Up
After the cataclysmic build, it tries the patience of the faithful class-warrior really, to think that Ballard would just drop the onslaught, the confrontation at the barricades, and just tuck it all safely into bed for the evening. But reader, he does just that.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Middle class revolt
in London suburbia
makes deadpan satire

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Air travel, the whole Heathrow thing, it’s a collective flight from reality. People walk up to the check-ins and for once in their lives they know where they’re going. Poor sods, it’s printed on their tickets.”

This was my first Ballard read, and I did enjoy his writing. He has a dry, dark wit, and creates the most unique sentences. Here are just two examples of his strangely accurate word pictures:

“I stood behind the curtains, my heart leaping against my chest like a trapped animal throwing itself at the bars of its cage.”

“I guess that for years she had been detaching herself from the real world, and in her mind rode a ghost train through a fairground she had built herself.”

I was totally onboard with the idea he explores here of a middle class revolt. Where Ballard lost me was with the cause of their revolt: a boredom and complacency that could only be conquered by random violence. I was willing to be convinced, but by the end of the book I still didn’t believe that premise.

The idea of a hunger for violence, latent in everyday people, brought on by boredom … well, it is terrifying. But the violence we are seeing so much of in the world lately, it doesn’t seem random at all. The deaths may be random, but the violence is pointed, racist, tied to horrific worldviews.

In the end, this affected me too much like my other Ballard experience--the movie based on his novel Crash. It was disturbing, but not in a good way, and just a little too yucky for my taste.

“…it’s insane. All of it—pointless violence, random murders, bomb attacks. They’re vicious crimes. Life is worth more.”

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in the UK in 2003, Millennium People was not even released in the USA until 2011. I thought I'd complained about publisher antics before! I'm not sure if they thought a story set in England wasn't universal enough, but the book would have been a disturbingly prophetic read in 2003.

Ballard discusses what happens when people reach a place of complacency, and the danger of the middle class. One of the major characters tries to prove that it is only random violence that helps us understand our place in the universe, which of course was uncomfortable. I don't like to think of myself as even marginally close to terrorism.

"No middle-class revolutionary can defend the barricades without a shower and a large cappuccino."

"People will set off bombs for the sake of free parking. Or for no reason at all. We're all bored, desperately bored. We're like children left for too long in a playroom. After a while we have to start breaking up the toys, even the ones we like. There's nothing we believe in...."

"We think we believe in God but we're terrified by the mysteries of life and death. We're deeply self-centered but can't cope with the idea of our finite selves. We believe in progress and the power of reason, but are haunted by the darker sides of human nature. We're obsessed with sex, but fear the sexual imagination and have to be protected by huge taboos. We believe in equality but hate the underclass... We're an accident of nature, but we think we're at the centre of the universe. We're a few steps from oblivion, but we hope we're somehow immortal...."

[Fotis Ips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Καταλήγω στο συμπέρασμα ότι ο Ballard είναι ένας πολύ ιδιαίτερος κι έξυπνος συγγραφέας, πού επιλέγει ζητήματα της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας (με κοινό χαρακτηριστικό την βία) για να ξεδιπλώσει την πλοκή του από μία, θα έλεγα, κοινωνιολογική οπτική γωνία.

Η υπόθεση αφορά την εξέγερση και την επανάσταση του προλεταριάτου, πού καταλήγει σε τρομοκρατικές επιθέσεις με στόχο ανθρώπους. Ο πρωταγωνιστής του βιβλίου επιθυμεί να μάθει ποίος ευθύνεται για την έκρηξη μίας βόμβας στο αεροδρόμιο όπου βρισκεται η πρώην γυναίκα του. Ξεκινώντας περισσότερο σαν αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα, καταλήγει ένα συνδυασμό ειδών: αστυνομικό, δράσης, κοινωνικό και πολιτικό. Μέσα απο τη υπόθεση, ο συγγραφέας πατάει σε σημεία για να σχολιάσει τις συγχρονες κοινωνίες και τις ακραίες αντιδράσεις των ανθρώπων, σε μία εποχή που επιθυμούσαν την αλλαγή χωρίς να ξέρουν ουσιαστικά τον λόγο. Σε κάποιους ίσως φανεί απότομη η κλιμάκωση στην ροή της υπόθεσης, ωστόσο δεν με ενόχλησε.

Η γραφή με κέρδισε αμέσως με το λυρικό ύφος της, αν και απαιτητική λόγω πολύ συχνής αφήγησης πού απαιτεί συγκέντρωση. Οι διάλογοι στα περισσότερα σημεία ήταν απολαυστικοί, με ικανοποιητική ψυχογράφηση των ηρώων.

Θα το προτιμούσα κάπως πιο περιεκτικό σε ορισμένα σημεία, καθώς κάπου οι πληροφορίες δεν ειχαν συνοχή με την υπόθεση. Κατά τα άλλα, το ευχαριστήθηκα!

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

My penultimate Ballard, another investigation into a warped version of corrupted middle class values.

This follows similar themes to Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights.

However, for me, there much enjoyment to be had reading Ballard's distinctive use of metaphors and mordant humour

[Paul Cowdell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another 3.5, I think, as the later Ballard doesn't quite do it for me in the same way as that magnificent, crystalline early stuff. But this is something of a surprise even for that later oeuvre. At times it is almost (unBallardian concept in some ways) playful.

Satire's a complicated genre. It can be all too easy for the satirised to identify with their representation to such an extent that the author ends up bending and adapting to them. This being Ballard, of course, no such mimsy conciliation happens, you'll be satisfied to know, but he does seem to be responding to a readership that might not quite have got what was going on more generally. (The book had some rave reviews from possibly unlikely quarters, like the Telegraph stable of papers, for example). It feels like this was the trigger for some of the uncustomarily knockabout one-liners.

But because it still /is/ Ballard, the result feels somewhat uneven. He's still prying away at the latent violence, the alienation, the apocalyptic concrete vistas of Heathrow, after all, and the writing here is no less beautiful or stunning than before. Some moments just pull you up short with their incision. London, for example, is described as 'a vast and stationary carousel, forever boarded by millions of would-be passengers who took their seats, waited and then dismounted.'

Even here, Ballard is unflinching, probing away at bleakness and humanity without sentiment or flippancy. Even when it doesn't quite come off, Ballard is still your best companion in a an empty and violent world.

[F.R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a comment piece this week about how the London-centric nature of the British media distorts the national argument. It put forward the theory that those working for newspapers, TV and radio don’t really appreciate that the views of their friends and neighbours in Islington or Hampstead are not necessarily shared by the wider populous. That piece (by whom, and where I read it, are details I’m afraid I cannot remember) stayed vivid in my mind as I read this novel about residents of well-to-do Chelsea Marina engaging in armed rebellion. Sickened by parking charges, maintenance fees, the price of good schools and the need to keep up with one’s neighbours, they launch attacks on various genteel sacred cows in a wild expression of middle class fury born out of malaise. Ballard drops in little references to how the revolution is spreading beyond the Capital (to Guilford and such places), but this is very much a novel of the London chattering classes.

This 2003 book has to be one of the odder responses to what happened on 9/11. It seems that Ballard looked at the events of that day and determined that, for all the terrorists’ claims, the violence committed was utterly pointless. To ram that idea home, he wrote a novel where the violence is (largely) utterly random and meaningless and is actually committed for a comically meaningless cause.

It’s actually a good idea, as nearly all acts that terrorists commit worldwide are needlessly devastating to no real effect. Furthermore, Ballard’s concept allows him to skewer the worst excesses of the Guardianistas, those folk who sit in their million pound houses, quaff champagne and speak of how they know true suffering. And yet the whole doesn’t really work. Since most of the characters we meet are on the revolutionary side, there’s a sense in which we’re implicated in what they believe (and also their actions can’t be made to seem as ridiculous as they should be). While the stylised nature of the violence (apart from the initial assault on Heathrow), means that it gets nowhere near the actual horror of a 9/11 or a 7/7 and so it doesn’t really slam home its point.

As such this is not my favourite Ballard (if you want to try a novel from his later period go for the excellent ‘Cocaine Nights’). The plot: a traumatised everyman falls under the spell of a scarred outsider whose deadly compulsions are getting gradually worse and who is aiming to go out with something spectacular; of course feels like another version of ‘Crash’. But this book gets nowhere near its predecessor’s unsettling power. While diversions late on in the story into the Jill Dando case and the Hungerford massacre, feel somewhat jarring. There are good things in this novel – particularly in the early skewering of the complacent middle classes – but it’s neither twisted enough to be a disturbing thriller, nor sharp enough to be truly successful satire.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, I saw this as almost a companion piece to DeLillo's White Noise--both take on the kind of ennui of the middle class, a search for meaning, albeit in very different ways. But since I just read White Noise, the comparison stood out. Both were funny, although Ballard's work always seems a bit darker with less satire... more of an alternate reality feel with the microscope on British society. The plot felt a little forced, like it was more of a vehicle for so many wonderful observations and delightful humor (a sort of detective story dropped over an absurdist revolution of the professional class). The first half was mostly a four-star read with the second half somewhat dragging my rating down a bit.

There were so many priceless passages. I'll leave you with some of my favorites:

"I sensed a short of primitive religion was being born, a faith in search of a god to worship. Congregations roamed the streets, hungry for a charismatic figure who would emerge sooner or later from the wilderness of a suburban shopping mall and scent a promising wind of passion and credulity."

"Hollywood flicks are fun, if your idea of a good time is a hamburger and a milk shake. America invented the movies so it would never have to grow up. We have angst, depression and middle-aged regret. They have Hollywood."

"Today's tourist goes nowhere... All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same pina colada bullshit. The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they're happy. But the suntans hide who they really are---salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy of the 20th Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself."

"Believe me, the next revolution is going to be about parking."

"These people want to change the world, use violence if they need to, but they've never had the central heating turned off in their lives."

"As always, a perverse calculus refreshed and redefined the world."
"First wives are a rite of passage into adult life. In many ways it's important that first marriages go wrong. That's how we learn the truth about ourselves."

"We're living in a soft-regime prison built by earlier generations of inmates."

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE MILLENNIUM PEOPLE is a wry take on Karl Marx's revolutionary theory. Marx felt that the end of the political status quo would occur when the workers on the bottom of the economic pyramid called it quits, and turned to violence, however Ballard sees the impetus for revolt coming from the more well-off middle class. Ballard envisions radical social change as a kind of, "Upholstered Apocalypse".

David Markham's ex-wife is killed by a terrorist bomb at Heathrow Airport, and this seems to be connected to a radical strike and middle-class uprising at Chelsea Marina, a posh housing estate in fashionable West London. An odd assortment of quirky characters propel the action. And, here is a brief description of some of the more memorable characters in this thoroughly enjoyable Black Comedy.

-Richard Gould, a whacked-out pediatrician who uses 'violent absurdism' to affect social change
-Kay Churchill, a political pundit and ex-film studies professor
-The Reverend Stephen Dexter, a motorcycle riding pastor who seems to have spiritually lost his way
-Joan Chang, a hip pseudo-revolutionary
-Sally Markam, who is David's wife and suffers from a delusion that she is still crippled from a childhood train accident in which she fully recovered
-Vera Blackburn, a demented explosive expert.

Ballard is a craftsmen when it comes to the turn of a phrase, and the story is both insightful and entertaining. It makes me want to reread his delightfully perverse novel, CRASH, which dealt with car-crash fetishism.

[Rebecca Alcazaze · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit like ‘Crash’ but shitter.

I usually enjoy Ballard’s socially unnerving narratives but this was disappointing. I imagine that he’d have been a great dinner guest but would have spoken on no more than two set themes all evening.

[Veerle · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many things Mr. Ballard didn't seem to like. And that's why I like him. This book feels far more recent than it is. It contains witty, funny, yet grumpy observations about the behaviour of the middle classes and society in general and made me chuckle ever so often.

[Ezgi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orta sınıfın proleterleştiğinin farkına varması üzerine isyan etmesini anlatıyor roman. Ballard huzur bozmaya yemin etmiş yazarlardan biri. Bu kitabında da kehanetlerine devam ediyor. Vaatler ülkesi diyebileceğimiz bir yerde sistemin uyuşturduğu insanların ahlaki paradokslarını ortaya seriyor. Bugün okunduğunda Ballard’ın soruları daha da tehlikeli bir hal alıyor. Hem tek problemlerinin tüketim ürünlerinin seçimleri olması hem de mülkiyetlerine aşırı bağlılıkları Milenyum İnsanları’nı tanımlıyor diyebilirim. Ahlaklı ama aynı zamanda açgözlü kısaca her şey olmaya çalışan insan olmaktan çekinmeliyiz.

[Robert McCaffrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a satirical novel of dull prose and scant humor, and Ballard's characters merely embody his vague (though interesting) ideas about the newly affluent and over-mortgaged professional class. Their rebellious antics are repetitious and never believably motivated, perhaps because the characters have no depth, even if they are easily recognizable as types. Ballard's penultimate novel and very likely my last.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Millennium People touches upon the usual Ballardian themes, and as always that he is the feeling that he is tapping into some disquieting undercurrents that others can't quite see. Around the turn of the century a kind of millenarian, revolutionary movement emerges among the middle classes. Their class position is subtly complicated. They are not the finance people making vast sums of money. They are the professional middle classes who are trying to maintain their good standing in British society but are beginning to feel precarious and unappreciated. They can't quite afford the private school fees or the gated community service fees that they are paying and are growing resentful. There are ideologues among them who are putting forward the kinds of arguments you hear in Fight Club about the stultifying culture they live in, intended to pacify them into submission to the world order. Ballard makes repeated reference to their middle class mores, there lack of experience of real struggle or suffering and their lack of toughness or propensity to violence, despite them seeing themselves as the new proletariat. This is a revolution against the structure of everyday life, without an ideological program. It is chaos for the sake of chaos (another thing that reminds me of Fight Club).

There are times when I was reading this when I thought, this is silly isn't it? It doesn't really make sense or hold together. But there were other times when reading it that I had a strong feeling that Ballard was really unearthing something about our society and capturing some deep social and psychological tendencies that others could not see. He was a visionary and a great artist.

[Satanakoga · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Steve Petherbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can the middle classes revolt like the Marxist proletariat against what they perceive as oppressive living conditions? JG Ballard puts forward this supposition in Millennium People. It resonated with me, as in Ireland, the middle classes have been imposed with the task of rescuing the failed Celtic Tiger Economy, brought about by a combination of mismanagement, failed oversight and some corruption by the ruling cabal of politicians, property speculators, rich businessmen, civil servants and others on the "inside track" of society and, in their minds, above the legal and fiscal statutes and rules applicable to ordinary people. The people of "middle Ireland" have been squeezed by increased direct and indirect taxes, loss of future pensions, unemployment, emigration and having to work a lot more for a lot less, while seeing the perpetrators escape, in their eyes, retribution. There have been marches in the streets, though non-violent, but, a definite whiff of "enough is enough" and threats of white-collar rebellion. But, unlike other countries who are more demonstrative in the streets, ours will likely be shown through the ballot box.

Ballard exerts his well honed style in elaborating his proposition, creating possibilities in the mind of his reader. He creates a protagonist, struggling between conversion and resistance, and another character more deeply embroiled in obsession, half-scientist and half-prophet. When this mechanism succeeds, the author draws the reader out of his safety and comfort zones, sewing seeds in his imagination, which is what good fiction does.

The protagonist here is David Markham, while the more extreme character is a pillar of any society, a doctor, Richard Gould. The action is centred in a middle-class suburb in London, called Chelsea Marina, really in Fulham, though the terrorist event which kicks off the story occurs at Heathrow. Markham is embarking on holiday with his wife, Sally, when a bomb planted on a luggage carousel kills his first wife, Laura.

Ballard seems content some of the time to have fun with the reader. "The bourgeois revolutionaries of Chelsea Marina remain bourgeois even as they take on the system that has both spoiled and exploited them. They order a dozen skips before they riot and tidy up afterwards. A Volvo may have been burnt out in the mayhem, but it has been properly left in a parking bay. When making Molotov cocktails, the revolutionaries use burgundy bottles, with regimental ties for wicks."

My problem with Millennium People is that the middle-class revolution is not really followed through or widespread enough. Ballard limits his proposition of the possibilities to an enclave within London and around a few primary characters, whose backgrounds more than their political convictions are their driving forces. The political motivation behind the revolts could have been stronger. Is Ballard's timidity in developing an interesting plot-line evidence of his middle-classness reigning in his thoughts and his natural predisposition, common to the middle class in society, to gripe and moan, but, to also conform in order to preserve the standing of their class above others?

An enjoyable read all the same.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in ancient times when this book was written we were all numbed by overexposure to information mostly through television, by an endless bombardment of frightening images and by lack of meaning in a life of seeming plenty without spiritual substance. We had material things, but our position seemed precarious, and we always felt that we were, as in Alice in Wonderland, running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. Mr. Ballard shows us people who try to address this dilemma through violent terrorism - bombs and senseless killing - so that they can shake up the world, but perhaps more importantly, so that they can overcome the numbness and feel something again. The essence of the violence is that it must be senseless to have meaning.

In today's world of COVID, political polarization, police violence and insurrection instigated by the president, we are still numb, but it comes from a different form of sensory overload. We have felt enough, thank you. We don't need to throw bombs so as to feel more. Now on both the left and right, we hear calls for violent acts, and that presents its own set of issues, but because the problems that motivate this kind of thinking today are different, Mr. Ballad's story of middle-class revolution is more than a little anachronistic.

And yet it is a compelling well-told story. Many layers of deception and self-deception are peeled off in an interesting way as the book progresses, and so create a sense that the truth can never be found or perhaps there is no truth in the modern world where we can keep licking the Tootsie pop until it is gone without finding any chocolate inside.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Millennium People" is a fine novel, it is comparable to maybe say "Concrete Island" in how it has a handful of solid notes but plays them very quickly. Published in 2003, but later in the states, it definitely has a lot of topical issues that cloud its thrust. It isn't the clean and austere meanness of "Super-Cannes" or even the prescient fascism and megamalls of "Kingdom Come". "Millennium People" isn't bad, it still has some insights, but there is this level of topical score settling that maybe 15 years later doesn't hold up as well. Which is odd considering how Ballard is viewed as a very prophetic writer. I wouldn't say it is wasted time, it's just other books of his casually referenced these themes of suburban rebellion (i.e. the tense "Running Wild") and had more to say than this one.

[Alessandro Pontorno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Il ricordo che serbavo di Ballard dalle mie letture giovanili era quello di uno scrittore capace di estremizzare il lato oscuro dell'essere umano, trasformando in violenza, horror, fantasia o ucronia quelle pulsioni animali che normalmente vengono tenute a bada dalla morale, dalla legge, dal buon senso.
Ballard è, culinariamente parlando, un piatto gustoso, ma un po' difficile da digerire a lungo andare.
Dopo alcuni anni mi è tornata voglia di assaggiarne ancora, ma -a differenza dei libri che più ho amato come Il condominio e Super Cannes- in questo Millennium People ho trovato un Ballard diverso, meno estremo e con un approccio più socio-politico.
Straordinario nel mettere su carta la paura dell'atto violento che nasce senza motivo (tragicamente familiare ai giorni nostri), Ballard non porta questo ragionamento alle estreme conseguenze, ma si limita a narrare una storia un po' sopra le righe.
Non è un brutto libro tout-court, ma è molto diverso da quello che mi aspettavo.
Come quando vai in pizzeria con il desiderio di una succulenta diavola e ti presentano una marinara con poco pomodoro e la pasta un po' troppo asciutta.

[Jan-Maat]

If I had read this book when it came out, I might have thought that it was a bit weird, maybe surreal, possibly a satire. But I read it now, after observing the angry and the fury in political discourse, even a stated desire for violence, and it seems that time has finally caught up with this book.

[Lukasz Rogowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marks XXI wieku - rewolucje rozpocznie klasa średnia.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
The idea behind Millennium People, like so many others from his career, is an interesting one; yet here, Ballard's tried and tested formula, which has worked so well before, is pretty weak.
The middle-class revolt, the terrorist outrage, and the double perspective in regards the two main characters David Markham and Doctor Richard Gould, borrowed quite a bit from crime fiction, but unlike Super-Cannes and Cocaine Nights - two of his later novels that I loved, this just didn't have a certain something, even though from the outset all the Main Ballard ingredients are there. Also, I am not a fan when Ballard throws comedy into his narratives; I like it better when they played out with a serious tone; when there is a darker psychology at play. Even the violence becomes boring, and it's sad to say, after reading so much of his work, if this does become one of the last I read, it's not ending on a high.

[Lazorik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δεν έχω διαβάσει ακόμα το Fight Club, η ταινία όμως είναι ανάμεσα στις αγαπημένες μου ever. Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο θα το χαρακτήριζα το Fight Club της μεσαίας τάξης, που εξεγείρεται με αφορμή κάποια πεζά αιτήματα σε μια μεσοαστική συνοικία του Λονδίνου, και την προσπάθεια του πρωταγωνιστή μέσα σ' αυτό το χάος να βρει τον υπεύθυνο μιας βομβιστικής επίθεσης που μοιάζει να συνδέεται με την όλη κατάσταση. Μοιάζει περισσότερο με νουάρ μυθιστόρημα και δεν έχει την καταιγιστική δράση και τους ρυθμούς που, αν κρίνω απ'την ταινία, έχει το βιβλίο του Palahniuk, έχει όμως διακριτικό χιούμορ, σαρκασμό και κυνική διάθεση.