Crash - J.G. Ballard
J.G. Ballard's highly controversial novel: famously one publisher's reader returned the verdict "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish."
****
Well if i have read this book, let's say 5 years ago before i would be accustomed to reading the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Alex Garland, Irvine Welsh and indulging in the brutal humor of Hunter S. Thompson i would probably come into the same conclusion that J.G. Ballard needs professional help.
But knowing what i know now ( haha ), i see J.G. Ballard's "Crash" as a unique work of fiction, powerful and brutal in a way it challenges our imagination by writing about what he calls "an extreme metaphor for an extreme situation, a kit of desperate measures only for use in extreme crisis"
And that metaphor is technology by way of automobiles, wrecked cars and car crashes serving as the "hellish tableau" in which the book's protagonist Vaughan a mad "TV scientist" experiments the relationship between a seemingly traumatic car accident experience and the forming of erotic atrocities with survivors amidst the lifelong remainder of body scar and injuries inflicted by the violent ordeal.
The Narrator which is named after the author, James Ballard relates his initial experience surviving a near fatal car accident which took the life of another person and left him in hospital for weeks, with countless scars on his body.
After being followed by Vaughan, Ballard develops a fetish for erotic experience in the confines of automobiles, developing a sexual relationship with other car crash survivors including the wife of the person he killed in his own automobile accident, Dr. Helen Remington.
As he gets to know the renegade scientist Vaughan, Ballard founds out more strange intricacies in the weird mind of Vaughan, which includes the grand design of his own death involving a terrifying "union of blood...engine coolant in a head on collision with actress Elizabeth Taylor" ( during which time this book is written circa 1973, is still a very popular Hollywood actress )
As Vaughan prepares for his own judgment day, he and Ballard participates with other willing subjects in more erotic experiments involving car accidents more sinister than the last, the end result is a mixture of blood, gore and acid trip and a surprise ending for Ballard.
****
" Vaughan unfolded for me all his obsessions with the mysterious eroticism of wounds: the perverse logic of blood soaked instrument panels, seat-belts smeared with excrement, sun visors lined with brain tissue...He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display of windows of deserted supermarkets"....
If these passages doesn't make you cringe, then maybe you can read and enjoy this book.
****
Well if i have read this book, let's say 5 years ago before i would be accustomed to reading the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Alex Garland, Irvine Welsh and indulging in the brutal humor of Hunter S. Thompson i would probably come into the same conclusion that J.G. Ballard needs professional help.
But knowing what i know now ( haha ), i see J.G. Ballard's "Crash" as a unique work of fiction, powerful and brutal in a way it challenges our imagination by writing about what he calls "an extreme metaphor for an extreme situation, a kit of desperate measures only for use in extreme crisis"
And that metaphor is technology by way of automobiles, wrecked cars and car crashes serving as the "hellish tableau" in which the book's protagonist Vaughan a mad "TV scientist" experiments the relationship between a seemingly traumatic car accident experience and the forming of erotic atrocities with survivors amidst the lifelong remainder of body scar and injuries inflicted by the violent ordeal.
The Narrator which is named after the author, James Ballard relates his initial experience surviving a near fatal car accident which took the life of another person and left him in hospital for weeks, with countless scars on his body.
After being followed by Vaughan, Ballard develops a fetish for erotic experience in the confines of automobiles, developing a sexual relationship with other car crash survivors including the wife of the person he killed in his own automobile accident, Dr. Helen Remington.
As he gets to know the renegade scientist Vaughan, Ballard founds out more strange intricacies in the weird mind of Vaughan, which includes the grand design of his own death involving a terrifying "union of blood...engine coolant in a head on collision with actress Elizabeth Taylor" ( during which time this book is written circa 1973, is still a very popular Hollywood actress )
As Vaughan prepares for his own judgment day, he and Ballard participates with other willing subjects in more erotic experiments involving car accidents more sinister than the last, the end result is a mixture of blood, gore and acid trip and a surprise ending for Ballard.
****
" Vaughan unfolded for me all his obsessions with the mysterious eroticism of wounds: the perverse logic of blood soaked instrument panels, seat-belts smeared with excrement, sun visors lined with brain tissue...He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display of windows of deserted supermarkets"....
If these passages doesn't make you cringe, then maybe you can read and enjoy this book.
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