| Crash | |
|---|---|
Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author(s) | J. G. Ballard |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel, Transgressive fiction |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Publication date | June 1973 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-224-00782-3 |
| OCLC Number | 797233 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823/.9/14 |
| LC Classification | PZ4.B1893 Cp PR6052.A46 |
| Preceded by | The Atrocity Exhibition |
| Followed by | Concrete Island |
Crash is a novel by English author J. G. Ballard, first published in 1973. It is a story about symphorophilia or car-crash sexual fetishism: its protagonists become sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car-crashes. The novel was written in a highly sensationalized manner.
It was a highly controversial novel: famously one publisher's reader returned the verdict "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!"[1] The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1996 by David Cronenberg. An earlier, apparently unauthorized adaptation called Nightmare Angel was filmed in 1986 by Susan Emerling and Zoe Beloff. This short film bears the credit "Inspired by J.G. Ballard." [2]
Contents |
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a “former TV-scientist, turned nightmare angel of the expressways”. Ballard meets Vaughan after being involved in a car accident himself near London Airport. Gathering around Vaughan is a group of alienated people, all of them former crash-victims, who follow him in his pursuit to re-enact the crashes of celebrities, and experience what the narrator calls "a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology". Vaughan’s ultimate fantasy is to die in a head-on collision with movie star Elizabeth Taylor.
The book explores themes such as the transformation of human psychology by modern technology, and consumer culture's fascination with celebrities and technological commodities. The human characters in the novel are cold and passionless, unable to become sexually excited unless some kind of technology is involved (typically architecture and cars). The gruesome damage inflicted on car-crash victims is not seen as shocking, but as the liberation of new sexual possibilities that have yet to be explored, such as in one scene where a man and a woman have sex in a car that was involved in an accident, but rather than have vaginal sex, he penetrates a wound on her thigh that she received in the crash.
Finally, the book asks why we, as an enlightened society, accept such a “perverse technology” – that kills a vast number of people yearly – as such an integral part of our culture.
Ballard writes in the foreword: “Do we see, in the car-crash, the portents of a nightmare marriage between technology, and our own sexuality? … Is there some deviant logic unfolding here, more powerful than that provided by reason?”
Digested Plot from the guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/22/crash-jg-ballard-digested-classic