Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I finished reading Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard the other day, and whilst it was a good read, I couldn’t help but feel that it was very, very similar to a few of his other books that I’ve read over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, as I have done all of Ballard’s books. With the exception of Empire of the Sun, which was essentially an autobiography of his childhood in Shanghai, Ballard explores some very interesting themes, usually concerning the potential for society to eat itself. He is very good at finding a dark underbelly to a seemingly innocuous situation, and showing how easily passions can be inflamed to destroy or alter what exists before.

In Cocaine Nights, for example, a journalist travels to the Spanish coast because his brother has been arrested for murdering five people in a house fire in their gated community. As he stays there, trying to prove his brother’s innocence, he gets drawn into a world which is very different from that which he sees at first glance. Essentially, the book boils down to forcing people out of the monotony of their lives and into something more interesting or rewarding. The catalyst for this is crime and violence, naturally.

As I said, this is all good material, and it’s nicely plotted too. Ballard is a very good writer, although his writing of sex is a touch iffy. It’s odd, because he can write eroticism particularly well, but the sex itself comes across as very mechanical. He’s more than capable of granting a character a huge charge of eroticism, or inserting a huge amount of it into a scene, but it then goes a bit dry (so to speak) as soon as they’re actually getting down to it. Odd.

Anyway, what I realised is that the character interactions are somewhat formulaic across a number of his books. In all four that I have read which tackle dystopian themes (Cocaine Nights, Crash, Millennium People, and Kingdom Come), the main character or narrator is taken from his comfort zone into the seedy underbelly of society by a charismatic newcomer to his life. He is cajoled and prodded into exploring the new experiences by someone else, rather than on his own accord.

And it always seems to be male to male as well. The central characters are male (if memory serves), as are the newcomers. I detect a certain air of weakness on the part of the central character every time, and he is always looking for someone to provide him with excitement, rather than seeking it out for himself. The newcomer is always welcoming, and swiftly takes the main character under his wing, making him a protege and imparting his wisdom.

Yes, the methods differ slightly, but essentially it’s the same character journey each time. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but in Cocaine Nights the newcomer’s “charisma” is mentioned so often that it’s just drilled into you. It reminded me massively of the TV spokesmodel in Kingdom Come who is the face of the shopping mall, and also of the driver in Crash who introduces the narrator to the sexual violence of car crashes.

What it also vaguely reminded me of was a theory I came across at university: Max Weber’s charismatic leader. OK, so I remembered the theory if not the philosopher, but it was up there in my head somewhere. University was evidently good for something!

Weber says that charismatic authority is one of the three possible bases for legitimising power in a society (the others being traditional authority, which is patriarchy, monarchy and so on, and rational-legal authority, which is more of a rules-based system), and that it comes about when a leader arises who can command obedience through nothing more than his own personal appearance.

He does not have legitimacy through being elected, nor from being an heir to the throne. His power derives from commanding others and having those orders obeyed because the populace believes him to be better than them, and so are loyal to him. A very simple explanation, and no doubt glossing over some subtleties, but that’s the basics.

In Ballard’s books, these charismatic newcomers fit that mould exactly: Cocaine Nights’ is a tennis coach, for example. It is only through relentless application of their charisma and forcing the other characters to believe in them that they gain their power, and their legitimacy.

For me, the characters which are attracted to these charismatic leaders are all the same: weak, searching for something a little different, and then surprised at just how far down the rabbit hole goes. Too often, they eventually want out, and try to rebel against their new leaders, sometimes too late to avoid the inevitable deaths and destruction.

I really do enjoy reading Ballard’s books, but if I find the next one to be following the same kind of structure, with the same basic characters, I think I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that kind of modern-day sociological dystopian novel?

I read Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon a few weeks ago, and it’s taken me a little while to pull together some thoughts on it. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and exposes so much that is right and wrong with police work in particular, and American society in general.

Simon’s name will be familiar for anyone who watched The Wire as obsessively as I did, as he’s the creator, executive producer and head writer for that series. If you know The Wire, you’ll also recognise a number of similar storylines and characters from this book. Hell, the guy on the front cover of my copy even looks a bit like McNulty.

That’s not to say that this is The Wire in book form. For a start, it’s only shown from the homicide police’s perspective. Simon spent a year (1988) embedded in the Baltimore homicide department, accompanying the detectives at crime scenes, arresting suspects, in court, and in general just being with them for every waking moment of their shift each day.

And he wrote it all down, painting each person in a good or a bad light based purely on their actions and words. It’s non-fiction, and although he himself (in the afterword) questions whether he got too close to the detectives to truly call it journalism, it’s a stunning portrait of how murder police work.

Structurally, it’s pretty much chronologically ordered, introducing the various members of the squad quite early on, and following them from body to body, investigation to investigation. Occasionally, Simon will pull in other cases from earlier or later in the year because thematically they relate to the case in question, but roughly it’s in order as each body is found and investigated.

There are a couple of big cases which form the main plotlines of the book, including one which ultimately remains unsolved to this day, but it’s surprising how many homicides are solved or cleared relatively easily (“dunkers”, in the parlance).

Worryingly, though, are the number of cases which are “stone cold whodunnits”, most often drug-related shootings where every witness denies seeing anything at all. The detectives must do battle with a culturally ingrained distrust of the police, and it’s incredible how they manage to get any information out of some people at all.

One of the areas which really concerned me as a member of society, and a believer in the justice system as a whole (it comes with having done a law degree. You have to believe!), was all of the back-room deals done as part of the prosecution process. Countless plea bargains were made, with certain 1st-degree murders reduced to 2nd-degree and so heavily reduced jail sentences.

This was usually because the state’s attorneys were unwilling to take a case to court which had any kind of shaky evidence whatsoever, no matter how small. As Simon points out, it was often that a white lawyer would find it difficult to convince a mostly black jury that a black defendant was guilty if any kind of doubt whatsoever (even false doubt) was placed on some evidence. Attorneys just wouldn’t take that risk, and so would agree to a guilty plea of a lesser charge, with the end result of a much shorter period in prison.

Race is a big issue in a city like Baltimore, and was keenly felt within the homicide department. Black detectives inevitably gained a little more co-operation from witnesses and informants, but I don’t remember any glaring instances of racism from the white detectives. It was the same in The Wire, with people like Greggs, Major Colvin and Carver having more success than McNulty on the streets.

It’s very easy to see the heavy influence that this book has had on The Wire, with some scenes lifted almost in their entirety, and in particular the very dark humour prevalent within the homicide office and detectives. But Homicide has a much keener focus on bodies and the investigations, rather than the wider-ranging scope of why these murders were occurring.

I understand that The Corner tells the tale of the war on drugs from the drug dealers’ perspective, and that these two opposing viewpoints are pulled together in The Wire, so I’ll be picking up that book soon enough.

Homicide is a fantastic book, and if you’re at all interested in police work, the justice system, or just a group of highly intelligent men doing their very best to make the world a slightly better place, it’s worth reading.

Books-wise, I seem to be getting into a non-fiction genre which I can only describe as the seedy underbelly of society.

I’ve always been drawn to fiction which has been centred around the darker side of life, be it drugs, violence, sex, and so on, usually all contained within the central character each time. Book like Peter Crumb, Clockwork Orange and Ryu Marukami’s works are amongst my favourites.

I’ve also read a hell of a lot of dystopian fiction, be it full-on sci-fi like Snow Crash or more subtle examinations of society’s ills, like Infinite Jest or Handmaid’s Tale. I guess I’m just interested in seeing a society or a character which is different from my own, but is believable in the sense of having a connection to my world.

Recently, however, I’m finding myself wanting real-life examples of small pockets of society that are fucked up. My current book is Homicide by David Simon, detailing a year in the life of the Baltimore Police Homicide department, and with that a year in the life of the city itself. It’s an absolutely incredible read, telling tales of the people within the police and out on the street interacting, and how various factors have influences (however overt or subtle) on everyone’s lives.

It’s left me wanting to read more like this, so next on my list are Methland by Nick Reding, which was rave-reviewed at the end of last year, and The Mole People by Jennifer Toth, from the mid-90s. The first book explores how drug abuse can destroy an entire town, whilst the latter concerns homeless people living in the tunnels under New York, which also reminds me that I need to watch Dark Days soon.

My last experiment in Tumblr-sourcing reading material went really well (and I need to write up some brief reviews of recent books), so if anyone has any ideas for similar books in this little non-fiction subgenre, can they let me know?

Book-buying pro-tip: If you’re in a second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road and go to the counter with just Snowblind and Cocaine Nights in your hand, the shopkeeper lady will make a comment and look at you as if you’re a drug fiend.

Trust me…

I finally finished Infinite Jest this afternoon, a mere 3 months after starting it. I’ve got a million and one thoughts about it, which I want to explore more over the weekend, but suffice it to say for now that it’s a brilliant book.

The writing is exquisitely crafted, and it was a joy to delve into that world every time I picked it up. Yes, it is daunting to look at, and I should’ve got through it a bit quicker, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.