Concrete Island

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Concrete Island is a novel by British writer J. G. Ballard, first published in 1974. [1] Plot introduction [ edit ] Aunque la lectura no se hace especialmente ágil o adictiva, cuando uno lo deja está deseando retomarlo para saber qué demonios pasa con Maitland. His relationships with Catherine and his mother, even with Helen Fairfax, all the thousand and one emotionally loaded transactions of his childhood, would have been tolerable if he had been able to pay for them in some neutral currency, hard cash across the high-priced counters of these relationships” (142). The story of Concrete Island is very simple indeed, almost a stage play with three principle actors, except that the most important character is the setting itself, the forlorn and ignored patch of discarded objects and marginal people which make up this island. The character of Maitland is far from a heroic protagonist, as his behavior becomes increasingly instinctual and selfish. And yet there is a strange appeal to their lives, forgotten by the modern world surrounding them.

A car accident leaves Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect in the midst of concealing his affair with a colleague, stranded in a large area of derelict land created by several intersecting motorways. Though surrounded by motorists and within sight of large buildings, Maitland is unable to escape the median strip and must struggle for survival. Along the way he encounters other inhabitants of the median strip, which he comes to call "The Island," including a teenaged sex worker who hides out in an abandoned air-raid bunker and an acrobat who became mentally disabled in an accident and now salvages car parts for bizarre shamanic rituals. He learns to survive by scavenging discarded food from littering motorists, and eventually comes to think of the island as his true home. Conflicts ensue with the other inhabitants and before long Maitland is struggling to determine whether he was truly meant to leave the island at all.

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This little book is the perfect complement to Ballard's more infamous novel, 'Crash'. The difference here is that we get a look at the not so fun side of the car crash compared to the zany, sexually fetishized thing that 'Crash' had going for it. 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. The grass lashed at his feet, as if angry that Maitland still wished to leave its green embrace” (68). 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." Just like in The Drowned World, Ballard introduces more characters and action in the second half of the book, but I think it works better in Concrete Island than it did in The Drowned World. Jane and Proctor are also alienated individuals. Together the three characters reveal three different relationships to the island:

As I read along, and as this poor man’s plight became more and more dire, I kept thinking: I know exactly how you feel, Mister. When I was in my twenties I read J G Ballard’s novel “Empire of the Sun”. I didn’t like it that much and it put me off reading more of his books, until now.I was really impressed with this short novel from 1974. First of all, I liked the concept of a modern day reworking of Robinson Crusoe in an urban setting. In the novel, architect Robert Maitland crashes on the motorway and careers down a steep embankment, to find himself in a wasteland bounded by embankments on three sides, with a metal wire mesh fence on the other. Unable to climb the embankments because of his injuries, he has to work out a way of surviving. In 2011, Barcelona-based production company Filmax announced that it was producing a film adaptation of the novel. Scott Kosar was set to adapt Ballard's story, and Brad Anderson was to direct. Actor Christian Bale was announced as the main character. A start date has yet to be announced. [3] Bale, who played the lead in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ballard's Empire of the Sun, apparently is no longer attached to the project. [4]

Maitland goes from trying to escape the island to trying to “dominate” the island. The island, of course, is himself. I’m convinced that Ballard didn’t care what people thought. Of course he did, though. His sentences are polished enough that he ironed most of them out like a fussy tailor. He shines best in his short novels, when he just takes one simple idea and draws it out to the extreme of absurdity. His landscapes retain a corny sort of Twilight Zone quality. Concrete Island is a representative work for him, I think, because it shows what he can do with a couple satirical characters in a nightmarish situation. Even more than High-Rise, I think this book epitomizes what he was going for. One puts oneself in the character’s shoes, wondering if it would be possible to live under such circumstances. Next time you pass a freeway island you’ll wonder, imagine yourself erecting a lean-to on the side of the road. He realized, above all, that the assumption he had made repeatedly since his arrival on the island – that sooner or later his crashed car would be noticed by a passing driver or policeman, and that rescue would come as inevitably as if he had crashed into the central reservation of a suburban dual carriageway – was completely false, part of that whole system of comfortable expectations he had carried with him. Given the peculiar topography of the island, its mantle of deep grass and coarse shrubbery, and the collection of ruined vehicles, there was no certainty that he would ever be noticed at all. A man driving a silver jaguar crashes his car and finds himself marooned and injured in a no-mans-patch-of-land in the middle of three highway overpasses. No one stops to help, or even notices he’s there. Genç bir mimar olan Robert Maitland, Londra’daki ofisinden evine doğru yol alırken, aracının lastiğinin patlaması sonucu otoyolların kesiştiği, otlarla kaplı noktaya, trafik adası olarak adlandırılan yere düşer. Kurtulmak için her yolu deneyen Maitland, şehirdeki duyarsız insanlarla dolu bu yoldan kurtulmanın kolay olmadığını kısa süre sonra acı bir şekilde tecrübe edecektir.That's my Desert Island List (if pressed I could cut it down to only the chocolate - although not an ounce less than 200 pounds!) but of course most people who end up on sandy atolls don't get their choice of either their supplies or their location, and so it is in Concrete Island. Günümüz dünyasındaki robotlaşan insanlara çok sert tokatlar atıyor Ballard bu eserinde. Çevirdiğimiz her sayfayla birlikte biraz daha gözlerimizin önüne seriliyor rezil hayatlarımız. Biraz daha ortaya dökülüyor kirli çamaşırlarımız. Ballard acımıyor bizlere, yerden yere vuruyor. Hemen hemen tüm eserlerinde insanın dönüşümünü odak noktasına oturtan, uzayı değil, insanları en ince ayrıntısına dek irdeleyen yazardan şaşırtmayan, güçlü bir eser. An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. Even if no man is an island, in the modern world any man could be found living in a total psychological isolation like on a desert island. And anyone can feel lonely in a crowd…

The later sections aren't quite as convincing, and in particular the two people Maitland meets on the island - an apparently brain-damaged ex-circus performer and a down-and-out woman from a wealthy family weren't entirely plausible to me. 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. It’s very difficult to say more about the plot without giving away spoilers, so I’ll just say that the storyline held my interest all the way, and to the end I remained curious about Maitland’s eventual fate. I also thought the interaction between the characters was done very effectively. The reader can also make their own mind up about Maitland’s behaviour. Is he perhaps using his injuries as an excuse for not trying harder to escape, in a sense choosing to remain – a rejection of the outside world?The first book I read by Ballard was The Drowned World. What I liked most about it was the imagery. The story itself, especially once the action truly began, seemed much less important than the mood Ballard established at the beginning with his lush descriptive writing. However, with Concrete Island, I was immediately captivated by the story. At first glance, mangrove forests are just shrubs and small trees that grow on tropical coastlines, but despite their deceptively simple appearance, mangrove forests are a fascinating form of vegetation. Adapted to harsh living conditions, these plants create homes for many migratory birds and sea life, and are also adept carbon sequesters, taking C02 out of the atmosphere. On coastlines they act as one of the most effective barriers against wind and coastal erosion and thus even help prevent flooding, as the video above explains. Ballard’s book, however, isn’t an affirmation of dog-eat-Darwinism. The presiding image of the island’s waist-high grass, which claims the chassis of assorted cars, Maitland’s included, is terrifying. As the novel comes to a close, the architect himself seems mindlessly rooted, if not paralyzed. “In some ways the task he had set himself was meaningless,” writes Ballard. “Already he felt no real need to leave the island, and this alone confirmed that he had established dominion over it.” As speculative fiction goes, this is sophisticated stuff; rather than imagine some fascist, post-apocalyptic society — see the graphic novel V for Vendetta, Alan Moore’s riposte to Margaret Thatcher’s England — Ballard discovered the plausible dystopia in plain sight: a concrete, postwar London in which the marginalized populate literal margins, those ruled lines where city-planning comes to an abrupt stop. [Ballard’s] wasteland isn’t the outcome of nuclear war; it’s the blank patch at the edge of our blueprints, the social void in our peripheral vision.