> Not only are his rhythmic cycles, in which phrases and images return in orders and arrangements that mutate and reconfigure themselves as though following some algorithm that remains beyond our grasp, at once incantatory, hallucinatory, and the very model and essence of poetry; but, mirroring the way that information, advertising, propaganda, public (and private) dialogue, and even consciousness itself run in reiterative loops and circuits, constitute a realism far exceeding that of the misnamed literary genre.
On a page-by-page level, Ballard's prose is honestly pretty bland. Which is okay! But I don't think it's an intentional act of genius. There were so many paragraphs in High-Rise where 3+ sentences would start with a participle phrase, often back to back.
The premise itself of the novel was interesting enough, so I managed to turn off my editor brain and enjoyed it for what it was. But there are novelists whose prose does legitimately mirror themes of alienation or paranoia (Pynchon and DeLillo come to mind) and I don't think Ballard is one of them.
As an aside, I've tried to read Crash at least three times now but the increasingly unbearable sex scenes keep driving me away. Not that I'm scandalized (if anything, I wish I were!)—they're just such a slog to get through. If I have to read the phrase "natal cleft" one more time...