Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : Vintage Books, 1985, c1973.
Description
An underground classic, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations. In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister then the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor.
User reviews
LibraryThing member alexrichman
The trouble with pornographic writing is that too much creativity has you nominated for the Bad Sex award for tortured metaphors - but playing it straight means using words like "pubis" forty times in twenty pages, as Ballard seems to here. Surely the dullest 'shocking' novel ever; all the
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characters do is drive around, crash and have sex (often mixing the latter option with the two previous ones). Had I seen the author's explanation of his motives for writing Crash - "I wanted to rub humanity's face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror" - I would have avoided this nonsense. Others should learn from my mistake. Show Less
LibraryThing member absurdeist
Too emotionally empty for my taste -- which was probably a part of Ballard's point regarding technology -- and I don't mind a disturbing read (in fact I enjoy a disturbing read) but this (and I realize I go against the grain here) had no point or purpose for me. Maybe I'm stupid and just didn't
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"get" it. People crash. Crash victims have sex in crumpled cars. There is something erotic about cars crashing. WhatEVER!! I so wanted to like this book. I felt icky reading it, and I'm not completely sure why. I'm certainly no prude. I absolutely loved Vollmann's "Royal Family" and it's a hell of a lot more vulgar than this. I suppose if Ballard's goal was to repulse and repel me in an unenjoyable way (I enjoy being repulsed & repelled in enjoyable ways, mind you) then he masterfully succeeded. I couldn't relate to these characters; I didn't like them; they were mostly disgusting and gross and morally repugnant (again, not that I'm Mr. Morals here, I'm certainly not) but there was nothing redeemable or hopeful about them, or in the plot, which really wasn't a plot but a series of car crashes infused with erotica by deranged if not demented minds. Usually, this kind of writing attracts me. I think this did not because of its overwhelming nihilism. I like nihilism, a la Bret Ellis or Hemingway or early Didion; I like them because they interweave their nihilism with either humor or detached outrage -- but there's neither of those qualities in "Crash". It's mind numbingly nihilistic. I suspect that Ballard may have been trying to elicit such a reaction, but at least, man, mix in some black humor along the way. If you're going to numb me with meaninglessness, at least make me smile if not chuckle a few times along the way. I can't imagine how awful the film version of this must be. Show Less
LibraryThing member c_j_bolt
This is a difficult book. It's both unrelenting and monotonous in its deliberately provocative, yet banal style. I don't normally review the books I read but felt compelled to add my comments to the discussion that has gone before re: Crash, particularly regarding it being the 'dullest "shocking"
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novel ever'. I think there is a lot of truth in that quote. Ballard has clearly worked out a grand schema for both the style and content of Crash, but I can't help but feel the achievement is undermined by the ultimate fungibility of each of the characters and the lack of any attempt to explain their nihilism. Also, bizarrely - for a short work - the novel seems too long to sustain the conveyor belt repetition of 'sex acts', metaphor and fetishes. I think Ballard's idea might have been better served by a novella, dropping some of the more mind-numbing passages. You'll need some resolve to finish this and to be frank I'm not sure its worth the bother, despite the plaudits from some. Show Less
LibraryThing member absurdeist
J.G. Ballard's Crash gives new meaning to the word 'autoerotic'. It's one hell of a ride.
LibraryThing member HvyMetalMG
Oh boy does this book crash. It crashes and burns in a 10 car pile up! Eh, I could not even finish it. Maybe that's what I deserve for reading a book about people who get thier sexual pleasures off watching and being in car crashes. Can someone tell me if I'm missing something here?
LibraryThing member reganrule
J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash puts me in mind of the great poet of our time, R. Kelly, and his perspective-shifting masterpiece, Ignition, if Ignition dared to reach its erotic-subversive logical conclusion. For Ballard, the techno-eroticism of the automobile necessarily finds its end in an
For reference, the truncated lyrics:
“Girl, please let me stick my key in your ignition, babe
So I can get this thing started and get rollin', babe
See, I'll be doin' about 80 on your freeway
Girl, I won't stop until I drive you crazy
So buckle up 'cause this can get bumpy, babe
Now hit the lights and check out all my functions, babe
Girl, back that thing up so I can wax it, baby
Honey, we gon' mess around and get a ticket, babe
Now hold on tight 'cause I'm about to go faster, babe
Girl, you're dealin' with a pro behind this wheel, babe
So tell me have you ever driven a stick, babe
You'll be screamin' every time we shiftin' gears, babe
So brace yourself while I'm hittin' them corners, babe
And when it's over put that tails on your license plate...”
Like R. Kelly’s song, the characters in Crash are at one moment operators of the car, in the next moment one with the car itself: e.g.. “let me stick my key in your ignition babe” suggests (obviously) that R. Kelly is decidedly not the vehicle, but the mechanism by which the vehicle’s (woman’s) engines are set running. In the next stanza his car-amour acts as the driver, exploring the dashboard body of R. Kelly. Later, Kelly is again the “pro behind the wheel”-- once more at the driver’s helm--confusingly asking the car-amour if she has ever driven a stick shift, which begs lots of metaphysical questions.
Kelly’s muddied metaphors aside, the familiar technology of the car coupled with the erotic encounter--the inherent danger of both--especially when combined--is just the kind of risky fantasy the modern world has made possible. But J.G. Ballard is no R. Kelly. Where R. Kelly plays exclusively with innuendo, Ballard minces no words:
[ahem] “As I pressed the head of my penis against the neck of her uterus, in which I could feel a dead machine, her cap, I looked at the cabin around me. This small space was crowded with angular control surfaces and rounded sections of human bodies interacting in unfamiliar junctions...The volumes of Helen’s thighs pressing against my hips, her left fist buried in my shoulder, her mouth grasping at my own, the shape and moisture of her anus as I stroked it with my ring finger, were each overlaid by the inventories of a benevolent technology--the moulded binnacle of the instrument dials, the jutting carapace of the steering column shroud, the extravagant pistol grip of the hand-brake...The passenger compartment enclosed us like a machine generating from our sexual act an homunculus of blood, semen and engine coolant…”
Ballard’s Crash explores the tipping point where the fantasy ceases to be satisfied by mere risk, and requires the crash of metal bodies to satisfy the sexual proclivities of human ones. Psychoanalysis has a name for this, of which the author was surely aware: the Death Drive.
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epic and annihilating collision, the most Kelly is willing to risk is a ticket and his shocks.For reference, the truncated lyrics:
“Girl, please let me stick my key in your ignition, babe
So I can get this thing started and get rollin', babe
See, I'll be doin' about 80 on your freeway
Girl, I won't stop until I drive you crazy
So buckle up 'cause this can get bumpy, babe
Now hit the lights and check out all my functions, babe
Girl, back that thing up so I can wax it, baby
Honey, we gon' mess around and get a ticket, babe
Now hold on tight 'cause I'm about to go faster, babe
Girl, you're dealin' with a pro behind this wheel, babe
So tell me have you ever driven a stick, babe
You'll be screamin' every time we shiftin' gears, babe
So brace yourself while I'm hittin' them corners, babe
And when it's over put that tails on your license plate...”
Like R. Kelly’s song, the characters in Crash are at one moment operators of the car, in the next moment one with the car itself: e.g.. “let me stick my key in your ignition babe” suggests (obviously) that R. Kelly is decidedly not the vehicle, but the mechanism by which the vehicle’s (woman’s) engines are set running. In the next stanza his car-amour acts as the driver, exploring the dashboard body of R. Kelly. Later, Kelly is again the “pro behind the wheel”-- once more at the driver’s helm--confusingly asking the car-amour if she has ever driven a stick shift, which begs lots of metaphysical questions.
Kelly’s muddied metaphors aside, the familiar technology of the car coupled with the erotic encounter--the inherent danger of both--especially when combined--is just the kind of risky fantasy the modern world has made possible. But J.G. Ballard is no R. Kelly. Where R. Kelly plays exclusively with innuendo, Ballard minces no words:
[ahem] “As I pressed the head of my penis against the neck of her uterus, in which I could feel a dead machine, her cap, I looked at the cabin around me. This small space was crowded with angular control surfaces and rounded sections of human bodies interacting in unfamiliar junctions...The volumes of Helen’s thighs pressing against my hips, her left fist buried in my shoulder, her mouth grasping at my own, the shape and moisture of her anus as I stroked it with my ring finger, were each overlaid by the inventories of a benevolent technology--the moulded binnacle of the instrument dials, the jutting carapace of the steering column shroud, the extravagant pistol grip of the hand-brake...The passenger compartment enclosed us like a machine generating from our sexual act an homunculus of blood, semen and engine coolant…”
Ballard’s Crash explores the tipping point where the fantasy ceases to be satisfied by mere risk, and requires the crash of metal bodies to satisfy the sexual proclivities of human ones. Psychoanalysis has a name for this, of which the author was surely aware: the Death Drive.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Hey, everybody, look! Sex! And violence! And more sex! And more violence! And loving detail to all of this! And cars! Sex and violence and cars! Look, semen and blood! Hey, everybody, look at me! Machines are bad, guys, they really are!
How boring. I really should stop.
How boring. I really should stop.
LibraryThing member ConnieJo
This was a terrible, terrible read. I've got a pretty strong stomach, and I went into this expecting to like it after hearing it was a cult classic.
The problem for me was not so much the gore, though there is a lot of graphic descriptions of injuries. The problem is the bland, repetitive writing.
That was my biggest problem with Crash. It's also depraved, which I could deal with if it wasn't so boring to read. Lots and lots and lots of sex happens, the main character and his wife often have affairs that they describe to one another in order to stimulate their sexual appetites for one another. Vaughn, the one who starts the car crash obsessions, frequently masturbates to car accidents. The characters use each other's wounds and scars from their accidents as sexual stimulants. The characters also frequently drive around highways causing near-accidents, but mostly just drive infinitely around looking for recent accident sites.
So, yes. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.
The problem for me was not so much the gore, though there is a lot of graphic descriptions of injuries. The problem is the bland, repetitive writing.
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The entire first chapter is just paragraph after paragraph of descriptions of accidents. The first three chapters are all sort of like this, with minimal plot slipped in. Well, actually, the entire book is like this, I think I probably just got used to it after awhile. The characters simply move from place to place while the main character ponders what happens to both cars and people in car crashes.That was my biggest problem with Crash. It's also depraved, which I could deal with if it wasn't so boring to read. Lots and lots and lots of sex happens, the main character and his wife often have affairs that they describe to one another in order to stimulate their sexual appetites for one another. Vaughn, the one who starts the car crash obsessions, frequently masturbates to car accidents. The characters use each other's wounds and scars from their accidents as sexual stimulants. The characters also frequently drive around highways causing near-accidents, but mostly just drive infinitely around looking for recent accident sites.
So, yes. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.
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LibraryThing member the_darling_copilots
Crash is controversial, and Ballard meant it to be, but that should not distract us from noticing that it’s incredibly well written. In Crash, people who have survived car crashes deal with their trauma by embracing and sexualizing the very crashes that maimed them (mentally and
Ballard’s descriptions of post-traumatic experience ring true. Sexual pleasure is the only thing Jim seems to value, and after his accident he unsurprisingly finds solace in more & more complicated & specific fantasies--he finds in sex the opposite of pain. We are given indications that before his accident, Jim had no human emotional connection beside the shallow consolations of sexual activity. As he recovers, we see (even if he doesn’t) how his worldview, full of cold technology and the constant screaming pursuit of pleasure, set the limits of his ability to recover from the emotional and spiritual damage of the accident.
As I moved through Crash, I could feel Jim’s superficiality—his desire for sensual escape from reality—inexorably drive him toward Vaughn’s messianic fetishism. By obscuring the true existential horrors that should constitute trauma, he is unable to heal in any meaningful way. Vaughn’s story ends predictably, and leaves Jim unable to do anything but dwell on it.
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physically).Ballard’s descriptions of post-traumatic experience ring true. Sexual pleasure is the only thing Jim seems to value, and after his accident he unsurprisingly finds solace in more & more complicated & specific fantasies--he finds in sex the opposite of pain. We are given indications that before his accident, Jim had no human emotional connection beside the shallow consolations of sexual activity. As he recovers, we see (even if he doesn’t) how his worldview, full of cold technology and the constant screaming pursuit of pleasure, set the limits of his ability to recover from the emotional and spiritual damage of the accident.
As I moved through Crash, I could feel Jim’s superficiality—his desire for sensual escape from reality—inexorably drive him toward Vaughn’s messianic fetishism. By obscuring the true existential horrors that should constitute trauma, he is unable to heal in any meaningful way. Vaughn’s story ends predictably, and leaves Jim unable to do anything but dwell on it.
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LibraryThing member mausergem
The story is told in first person by James Ballard himself. Ballard has an accident where he is injured. The other driver is killed and his fellow passenger is hurt. After returning from the hospital Ballard makes automobile erotic connotations. He meets Vaughan who introduces him to other
Full marks for the style but no marks for the story. When it came out in 1973, it must have shocked a lot of people for its graphic descriptions of the accidents and the sex acts.
“Technology will mark our lives” is the message.
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automobile accident victims who are experiencing similar fantasies. What follows are a lot of crashes and a lot of sex. Vaughan’s fantasies in time mature and he wants to crash his car into Elizabeth Taylor’s car and die in the process which will mark his mating with the actress. He dies in the process but palts the seed of his psychopathic tendencies in his followers.Full marks for the style but no marks for the story. When it came out in 1973, it must have shocked a lot of people for its graphic descriptions of the accidents and the sex acts.
“Technology will mark our lives” is the message.
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LibraryThing member palaverofbirds
Ballard is one of the most relevant writers I've come across for this day and age. I've been a moderate fan of the movie version of this book for a while, but the film does no justice to the book at all.
The basic premise of this, and much of Ballard's work, deals with the complete de-humanization
The basic premise of this, and much of Ballard's work, deals with the complete de-humanization
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and reductionism of the modern era. His characters are sexual, psychological mechanisms operating in technological corridors. The car-sex theme of the book is blatantly metaphorical but scary in its pure crticism of our reductionist world. Show Less
LibraryThing member ursula
This one left me with lots of notes and not much of an idea how to begin putting those thoughts together into something coherent, so I won't promise any sort of organized comments.
I'm going to guess that most readers pick this one up with some knowledge of the content, which involves the
The book is the direct opposite of the saying "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Nothing is ever just a cigar here. Everything is muddled together: reality and fantasy, sex and violence, metal and bodily fluids, organic descriptors for inorganic objects and vice versa. The automobile accident is seen as a way to literally jolt people out of their everyday complacency and awaken them to the real possibilities of the world. Injury and pain are the means to a form of enlightenment (but not in any form Buddha would recognize). Cars are described as arbors or bowers, or "benevolent technology." The modern relationship with the vehicle is taken to its most extreme position, its nature as both a public and a private place explored from every angle.
The writing is the melding of style and substance. Words, phrases, ideas are repeated, echoed and mimicked even as the characters find patterns in accident scenes and try to recreate them with their own movements and postures. Reading the book is itself like witnessing a car accident - you want to look away, but somehow you just can't.
Recommended for: people who like to dissect meanings, non-germophobes (there are a lot of bodily fluids), Sigmund Freud, David Cronenberg fans.
Quote: "I had thought of his last moments alive, frantic milliseconds of pain and violence in which he had been catapulted from a pleasant domestic interlude into a concertina of metallized death."
I'm going to guess that most readers pick this one up with some knowledge of the content, which involves the
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intersection (pun oh so painfully intended) of automobiles, traffic accidents, and eroticism. Our narrator (coincidentally named James Ballard) gets into a car accident with another vehicle containing a couple; the man dies, the woman lives. From there, Ballard becomes entangled with Vaughan, a morbid aficionado of collisions. The book is the direct opposite of the saying "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Nothing is ever just a cigar here. Everything is muddled together: reality and fantasy, sex and violence, metal and bodily fluids, organic descriptors for inorganic objects and vice versa. The automobile accident is seen as a way to literally jolt people out of their everyday complacency and awaken them to the real possibilities of the world. Injury and pain are the means to a form of enlightenment (but not in any form Buddha would recognize). Cars are described as arbors or bowers, or "benevolent technology." The modern relationship with the vehicle is taken to its most extreme position, its nature as both a public and a private place explored from every angle.
The writing is the melding of style and substance. Words, phrases, ideas are repeated, echoed and mimicked even as the characters find patterns in accident scenes and try to recreate them with their own movements and postures. Reading the book is itself like witnessing a car accident - you want to look away, but somehow you just can't.
Recommended for: people who like to dissect meanings, non-germophobes (there are a lot of bodily fluids), Sigmund Freud, David Cronenberg fans.
Quote: "I had thought of his last moments alive, frantic milliseconds of pain and violence in which he had been catapulted from a pleasant domestic interlude into a concertina of metallized death."
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LibraryThing member Peppuzzo
Disgusting at the beginning, boring going forward. Forget about this book as quick as you can.
LibraryThing member Nandakishore_Varma
I know this avant-garde novel is supposed have opened up brave new vistas in dystopian fiction, by "boldly going where no man has gone before". The courage of J. G. Ballard has to be admired the way he links violent death with sex: his narrative structuring is exemplary. However, I simply could not
So I will have to give this a miserable one-star rating. I cannot honestly recommend it to anyone. The only thing is, the reactions these type of novels create are highly subjective: so should it prove to be your cup of tea, it may even come up with five stars.
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get into the book even after three or four tries. The characters were extremely unlikeable: the main premise was bizarre: and the story failed to hold my interest. I did not finish it.So I will have to give this a miserable one-star rating. I cannot honestly recommend it to anyone. The only thing is, the reactions these type of novels create are highly subjective: so should it prove to be your cup of tea, it may even come up with five stars.
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LibraryThing member melaniemaksin
Reading this book wore me out. I like Ballard, I think he's a writer who really gets technology, modernity, isolation, etc., and I'm pretty non-judgmental about even sort of far-out fetishes, but what kept flashing through my brain was GRATUITOUS GRATUITOUS WHEN WILL THIS BOOK END ARRGH. And I
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don't even mean that it was gratuitous with the sex-and-accidents stuff (although it was)--the blunt, increasingly inelegant repetition of Ballard's arguments made a compelling idea, after a certain point, just tedious. In much the same way that there are only so many words for various parts of the human anatomy (and, dear lord, if I see the words "groin" or "pubis" again in my lifetime it will be too soon), maybe there are only a fixed number of ways of looking at a car crash. Show Less
LibraryThing member martensgirl
I really could not wait for this book to end. I'm not squeamish at all, I just found all the descriptions of car crashes and their 'eroticism' rather dull and repetitive, rather like a child who's learnt to say a rude word. I did not find the conjunction of sex and car crashes believable,
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interesting or challenging; just a tiresome for-the-sake-of-it incoherent ramble. Show Less
LibraryThing member Evalangui
I HATE THIS SO MUCH. It's profoundly repugnant. Annoys me particularly because the bits that don't turn my stomach are well-written, even ocassionally insightful.
LibraryThing member bibliobibuli
I can appreciate the book's audacity and it's darkness. And yes, I do feel the author has something important to say about the direction that humanity is headed, becoming increasingly depersonalised in this age of technology. I can take on board the message about how sexuality could become
But the descriptions are distressingly graphic and I almost lost my dinner at one point. (Warning: read on an empty stomach.)
Apparently an editor at Ballard's publishing house warned:
"This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish."
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subverted under such circumstances. (The characters become sexually fixated with car smashes, linger lovingly over pictures of the wounds of smash victims, haunt accident sites, get a hard on from seeing twisted wrecks, and believe a head-on collision yields the ultimate orgasm.)But the descriptions are distressingly graphic and I almost lost my dinner at one point. (Warning: read on an empty stomach.)
Apparently an editor at Ballard's publishing house warned:
"This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish."
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LibraryThing member earthforms
I read this after hearing The Normal's Warm Leatherette and learning about its inspiration. Surprisingly not as disturbing as I had imagined it would be. The first chapter is by far the "worst." I'm wondering if I'm just becoming desensitized to the world. I appreciate and relate to the feelings of
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isolation and technology and how it still translates to today, maybe even more so. Show Less
LibraryThing member neiljohnford
I wasn't that keen on this one. Maybe I completely missed the point but I don't think this really deserves the acclaim it has. Most of the characters were poorly drawn. I didn't really relate to the main characters and also variations on the word "stylised" were overused. Don't get it (in that I
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don't get it and also advise others not to). Show Less
LibraryThing member ablueidol
In reading most works by J.G. Ballard you need to be prepared for dystopian modernity, with bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments. Crash 1973 is central to that view of his writing. It is a phonographic depiction of sexually
The story starts with a couple that have an open sexual relationship so sleeping with different partners carrying out any type of penetrative sex imaginable and more you haven’t. And get their kicks in telling each other etc. On the way to work “Ballard” kills someone in a head on car crash gets drawn into a sub world of men and women who get their sexual kicks from sex in crashed or crashing cars and attending car crashes. He had noticed Vaughan photographing him at the accident and the hospital. Through him “Ballard” gets drawn into ever more violent sexual activity, including becoming aroused and having sex with him using his scars as a scaffold to…
A central story line is the plot by Vaughan to die having sex while crashing into a car containing the hottest top female film star of the day. “Ballard’s” wife in between a lesbian affair gets the hots for him and gets xxxxed in the backseat as “Ballard” drives at dangerous speeds watching them in the rear mirror.
How much of this is about Ballard’s own sexual kicks is unclear as in 1970 Ballard organized an exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory, appropriately called "Crashed Cars". The crashed vehicles and their sexual potential were displayed without commentary, inspiring vitriolic responses and vandalism. The main character of Crash is called James Ballard living in Shepperton as did the author. And he suffered a serious automobile accident shortly after completing the novel.
The book must not be confused with the 2004 film Crash which is an Academy Award-winning drama film directed by Paul Haggis. This film seeks to depict and examine not only racial tension, but also the distance between strangers in general. The film of the book is 1996 film directed by David Cronenberg. It was praised and attacked in equal measure and won a special prize for daring, audacity, and originality at the Cannes film festival.
So why ,if you are still with me, would you bother to read what appears to be such a distasteful book? The clue is in the structure and descriptions of the book repetitive phraseology of medical sexual teams and the descriptions of the car and body parts. It means that you the reader experience the alienation and emptiness that is the heart of the story. The story is not erotic in any sense as it point to the emptiness of lives that depend on more and more extreme highs and drugs to keep the sexual tension going. Death then becomes the ultimate sexual act. Nowhere does love and community figure in a world of motorways, airports, roundabouts and technological emptiness. What ever the feelings and motives of the writer, the story serves as a warning of a society that obsesses objects and appearances over personal relationships and social community-who cares for the children in this vision of our lives?
I didn’t find it an easy read and was reluctant to spend time reading it but would recommend it for the importance of us seeking to avoid a reality that could become our world if we cease to love.
"The success of love is in the loving; it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done".
Mother Teresa
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fetished car crashes and the resulting body deformities. You know you are in for a bumpy ride(yes I know) when one of the scenes is about sex with a willing invalid car driver (remember the little green boxes on wheels) who because of wounds and missing or damaged limbs has more holes capable of penetrative sex.The story starts with a couple that have an open sexual relationship so sleeping with different partners carrying out any type of penetrative sex imaginable and more you haven’t. And get their kicks in telling each other etc. On the way to work “Ballard” kills someone in a head on car crash gets drawn into a sub world of men and women who get their sexual kicks from sex in crashed or crashing cars and attending car crashes. He had noticed Vaughan photographing him at the accident and the hospital. Through him “Ballard” gets drawn into ever more violent sexual activity, including becoming aroused and having sex with him using his scars as a scaffold to…
A central story line is the plot by Vaughan to die having sex while crashing into a car containing the hottest top female film star of the day. “Ballard’s” wife in between a lesbian affair gets the hots for him and gets xxxxed in the backseat as “Ballard” drives at dangerous speeds watching them in the rear mirror.
How much of this is about Ballard’s own sexual kicks is unclear as in 1970 Ballard organized an exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory, appropriately called "Crashed Cars". The crashed vehicles and their sexual potential were displayed without commentary, inspiring vitriolic responses and vandalism. The main character of Crash is called James Ballard living in Shepperton as did the author. And he suffered a serious automobile accident shortly after completing the novel.
The book must not be confused with the 2004 film Crash which is an Academy Award-winning drama film directed by Paul Haggis. This film seeks to depict and examine not only racial tension, but also the distance between strangers in general. The film of the book is 1996 film directed by David Cronenberg. It was praised and attacked in equal measure and won a special prize for daring, audacity, and originality at the Cannes film festival.
So why ,if you are still with me, would you bother to read what appears to be such a distasteful book? The clue is in the structure and descriptions of the book repetitive phraseology of medical sexual teams and the descriptions of the car and body parts. It means that you the reader experience the alienation and emptiness that is the heart of the story. The story is not erotic in any sense as it point to the emptiness of lives that depend on more and more extreme highs and drugs to keep the sexual tension going. Death then becomes the ultimate sexual act. Nowhere does love and community figure in a world of motorways, airports, roundabouts and technological emptiness. What ever the feelings and motives of the writer, the story serves as a warning of a society that obsesses objects and appearances over personal relationships and social community-who cares for the children in this vision of our lives?
I didn’t find it an easy read and was reluctant to spend time reading it but would recommend it for the importance of us seeking to avoid a reality that could become our world if we cease to love.
"The success of love is in the loving; it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done".
Mother Teresa
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LibraryThing member leslie.98
I read the first 4 chapters before I gave up. The writing is good but I can't stomach the content, which made me feel physically ill. Perhaps this novel deserves to be on the Guardian's 1000 novels everyone should read list, but I will never know as I will never pick this up again.
LibraryThing member RandyStafford
My reaction to reading this novel in 1997. Spoilers follow.
This is a perverse novel about a group of automobile accident victims who develop a sexual fetish for car wrecks and the resulting injuries. There is a lot of sex in this book, but it isn’t very arousing. If this is an attempt at
While this is not an sf novel per se, it has a science fiction sensibility about it in its exploration of the erotic attraction and mediation involved in a technology – here autos and automobile transportation (even for the failures of the latter in wrecks). Ballard uses the novel to plot an extended series of sexual metaphors involving autos. In that sense, I can see his influence on the cyberpunks and their use of technological metaphors (though William Gibson is more skilled in this area). His fascination with celebrities and media – here symbolized by Vaughn’s obsession with “the film actress Elizabeth Taylor” – also prefigures cyberpunk themes. Sf critics antagonistic to the New Wave and its major figure Ballard accused him of creating disaster stories in which not only does the hero not try to prevent the disaster, is passive in the face of it, but actually seem to desire it. This is certainly true here. The narrator – named James Ballard – not only senses a coming “autogeddon” but looks forward to his death in it and plots the erotic configurations of his future death.
This is a perverse novel about a group of automobile accident victims who develop a sexual fetish for car wrecks and the resulting injuries. There is a lot of sex in this book, but it isn’t very arousing. If this is an attempt at
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pornography (I don’t think it is), it’s not very successful. Ballard’s prose is too clinical (I believe he contemplated a medical career once), to be arousing. This prose tone and quality mutes his attempt at poetic explanations for his narrator and Vaughn's (that "nightmare angel of the highways”) thuggy, obsessed psychological state. While l I realize that people can and do develop all sorts of bizarre sexual fetishes, Ballard never really convinced me of the reality, plausibility, or emotion behind this one. While this is not an sf novel per se, it has a science fiction sensibility about it in its exploration of the erotic attraction and mediation involved in a technology – here autos and automobile transportation (even for the failures of the latter in wrecks). Ballard uses the novel to plot an extended series of sexual metaphors involving autos. In that sense, I can see his influence on the cyberpunks and their use of technological metaphors (though William Gibson is more skilled in this area). His fascination with celebrities and media – here symbolized by Vaughn’s obsession with “the film actress Elizabeth Taylor” – also prefigures cyberpunk themes. Sf critics antagonistic to the New Wave and its major figure Ballard accused him of creating disaster stories in which not only does the hero not try to prevent the disaster, is passive in the face of it, but actually seem to desire it. This is certainly true here. The narrator – named James Ballard – not only senses a coming “autogeddon” but looks forward to his death in it and plots the erotic configurations of his future death.
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LibraryThing member chuckzak
Ballard has a knack for setting a mysterious and menacing tone that I enjoyed in books like The Crystal World and Memories of the Space Age and that effectively creeps out the highways that circle the "London airport" where these characters hunt for victims of their strange sexual desires. The
Sometimes the shock works, though, and the book has more than a few quick descriptions that had me shaking my head in appalled surprise. Though the inhumanity of the characters kept me at a distance, their cold amorality had its own sociopathic allure. Ultimately it left me colder than it should have, but there was still a lot to like. RIP to Ballard who passed away a couple of days ago, probably just as I was rolling my eyes at yet another bizarre fetish of one of the death-obsessed, impossible characters of this book.
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story of this group of pitiless fetishists unfolds in a slightly unreal environment with plenty of sex, mucus, and blood but so little identifiably human emotion that it becomes hard to believe in these characters. I'm not sure I'm buying their exploits as some sort of radical new sexuality either, and Ballard tries too hard to convince me, in shocking similes and extensive description of the perverse sex acts.Sometimes the shock works, though, and the book has more than a few quick descriptions that had me shaking my head in appalled surprise. Though the inhumanity of the characters kept me at a distance, their cold amorality had its own sociopathic allure. Ultimately it left me colder than it should have, but there was still a lot to like. RIP to Ballard who passed away a couple of days ago, probably just as I was rolling my eyes at yet another bizarre fetish of one of the death-obsessed, impossible characters of this book.
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LibraryThing member JWarren42
Lots of other people who are a lot better than me have written all kinds of things about this novel. I will say this: The first hundred pages of the novel are relatively un-engaging. It's almost entirely narrative voice with almost zero dialogue interaction between characters. This was especially
The writing is disappointing in all of those ways, though, because all the things that are fascinating about the book are given short shrift--this includes the scene where Ballard first meets Vaughan, which was the one I most wanted to read. The novel is also not helped by the long winded and repetitious first chapter.
So is the book fascinating, conceptually, and highly influential on two whole generations of authors who have come along since its publication? Yes. Is it a good read? Marginally.
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difficult for me because that's my favorite part of any book--watching how the characters interact with each other. So the concept is fascinating, the narrative is layered upon inspection and flat on the surface (as many have said), and the narrator's voice is brutally unadorned, mimicking pornographic photography (as many others have said, as well). The writing is disappointing in all of those ways, though, because all the things that are fascinating about the book are given short shrift--this includes the scene where Ballard first meets Vaughan, which was the one I most wanted to read. The novel is also not helped by the long winded and repetitious first chapter.
So is the book fascinating, conceptually, and highly influential on two whole generations of authors who have come along since its publication? Yes. Is it a good read? Marginally.
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Subjects
Awards
Kurd Laßwitz Preis (Nominat — 1986)
The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Original publication date
1973
Physical description
223 p.; 18 cm
ISBN
0394741099 / 9780394741093