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Concrete Island

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I understand that Ballard had designs at one point on adapting this into a children's book entitled "Robert Maitland and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." Kind of a heavy allegory, isn't it? Compared to the gorgeous and masterful final volume of the urban disaster trilogy High-Rise, Concrete Island is leaning a little bit too much on the power of its perceptive allegory. The idea of it is so incredibly smart and engaging, it kind of overshadows its characters? There are only three if you don't count the highway, which in my opinion is the real protagonist of Concrete Island. And I believe you should read it with that in mind. What makes the novel more than a simple modern adaptation of Robinson Crusoeis the relationship between Robert Maitland and the highway, the very object that meant to facilitate his high-efficiency existence and that ended up rejecting him. That is really what's interesting about Concrete Island and every other interaction in the book is meant to make you understand the relationship between Maitland and the highway better. All this is pretty interesting, but you're probably wondering - is it a good read? The answer is: mostly. In fact, the whole city was now asleep, part of an immense unconscious Europe, while he himself crawled about on a forgotten traffic island like the nightmare of this slumbering continent.

As his strength wanes and his thoughts become blurred from hunger and illness he begins to wonder: did he subconsciously contrive to put himself on the island? Is he somehow working against himself as he tries to escape? Is there a part of him that wants to leave his complex modern life and revert to a kind of isolated savagery? Proctor’s arrival was gradual. The highway was simply built around him. Having no motivation to leave, he allowed himself to be isolated. Now the island is his protection from the outside world. Maitland’s fate is the fate of the individual in the dehumanizing modern world, a technological world that alienates people from each other even as it crowds them closer and closer together, a social world that leaves a man feeling empty even when he possesses all the social marks of success—a Jaguar, a mistress, a high-paying career.The comparison you'll often hear for J.G Ballard's Concrete Island is a modern living Robinson Crusoe. It's a little more complicated than that. Nothing in this novel can be taken at face value. Robert Maitland is alone, trying to signal help for half of Concrete Island a what's going inside his mind during that time is important. He is reminiscing of his wife Catherine and his kid David, but also of his mistress Helen Fox. Maitland had his accident while going home from Helen's to his wife and kid's. So, the superstructure that facilitated his dual existence took him out of the equation into a third plane of existence where he is forced to confront the desolate, jagged landscape he created for himself. The concrete island is more of a symbolic purgatory than a modern desert island if you will. So, Concrete Island is Robinson Crusoe meets Lost if you will. There is a desert island, but only for people who deserve to be there. So Concrete Island can be read as a parable of alienation of an individual in the vast urbanized world. I do so by choice. But what if someone found themselves in one of the these lost zones against their will, victim of a motor accident, trapped by speeding traffic, barriers, and the semi-wild post-human landscape? These were places not meant to hold people, so why would anyone think to look for anyone in one? They're not made to be moved in without a car or train, so how easy would it be for the uninitiated to get out? This is Ballard's scenario, an ordinary man immobilized into one such Concrete Island cut out of the city by its mobility-infrastructure and unable to escape, a survival story ironically within a stones throw of all manner of normal modern life. It's oddly believable -- I've seen these spaces, spent time in them: they aren't meant for people. Aunque la lectura no se hace especialmente ágil o adictiva, cuando uno lo deja está deseando retomarlo para saber qué demonios pasa con Maitland.

This is my dumb Summer-self knowingly bowing before Entertainment rather than Enlightenment. Why? 'Cause sometimes the old girl upstairs needs a break. I believe there are worse crimes. Say, television.An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

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