I wonder if Ballard read Chesterton's essay “Skyscraper” (1932; collected in
Sidelights on New London and Newer York And Other Essays) and was influenced by it?
There is one lesson to be learnt from skyscrapers, which just now is very vital — or rather very deadly. It illustrates that huge inhuman anomaly of modern men being cut off from the very earth. It is connected with what I have said about the impossibility of scraping the sky and the possibility of scraping the soil. A perfect parallel of our whole argument might be offered, in a story of the men in the lower flats of a skyscraper starting to starve out the men in the higher ones. The men in the higher ones would have every advantage of what are called modern improvements and conveniences; light and ventilation and telephones and hot and cold water — until they were cut off at the main. But they could not devour telephone wires, and might even be averse from eating soap; and unless they could grow a kitchen-garden in a window-box, they would presumably die or surrender. A fine American epic might be written about the battle in the big hotel, with its multitudinous cells for its swarming bees. It might describe the exciting battle for the elevators; the war of the nameless and numberless guests, known only by their numbers. It might describe the gallant sally of 55783, who succeeded in seizing and working the thirty-second lift; the heroic conduct of 62o 17, in bringing up an armful of yams and sweet potatoes by the fire-escape; of the deathless deeds of 65991, whose name, or rather number, will resound for ever in history. It would be great fun.
A properly Chestertonian ‘High Rise’
would be fun, I think: and perhaps rather more fun than the slightly flattened lord-of-the-flies-esque guignolery of Ballard's version.
