Crash (J. G. Ballard novel)

Crash
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	J. G. Ballard
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Postmodern novel, Transgressive fiction
Publisher	Jonathan Cape
Publication date	June 1973
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	0-224-00782-3
OCLC	797233
Dewey Decimal	823/.9/14
LC Class	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 specifically car-crash sexual fetishism: its protagonists become sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car-crashes.

It was a highly controversial novel: one publisher's reader returned the verdict "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!"^[1] In 1996, the novel was made into a film of the same name by David Cronenberg.

Plot summary

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.

References in popular art

Music

The Normal's 1978 song "Warm Leatherette" was inspired by the novel, as was "Miss the Girl," a 1983 single by The Creatures. The Manic Street Preachers' song "Mausoleum" from 1994's The Holy Bible contains the famous Ballard quote about his reasons for writing the book, "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit. I wanted to force it to look in the mirror." ^[2]

The singer Glenn Danzig sings about this in his band Samhain's song "Kiss Of Steel" on the album "November-Coming-Fire"

Film

An apparently unauthorized adaptation of Crash called Nightmare Angel was filmed in 1986 by Susan Emerling and Zoe Beloff. This short film bears the credit "Inspired by J.G. Ballard."^[3]

References

↑ Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom, trans. John Irons (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 82.
↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/20/jg-ballard-film-music-architecture-tv
↑ Taylor, Brett (Oct–Nov 2009). "The Forgotten Crash: Nightmare Angel". Video Watchdog (152): 12–16.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Crash (J. G. Ballard novel)

The Terminal Collection: JG Ballard First Editions
Crash at the British Library

Works by J. G. Ballard
Novels	The Wind from Nowhere (1961) The Drowned World (1962) The Burning World (1964) The Crystal World (1966) The Atrocity Exhibition (1969) Crash (1973) Concrete Island (1974) High-Rise (1975) The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) Hello America (1981) Empire of the Sun (1984) The Day of Creation (1987) Running Wild (1988) The Kindness of Women (1991) Rushing to Paradise (1994) Cocaine Nights (1996) Super-Cannes (2000) Millennium People (2003) Kingdom Come (2006)
Short stories	"Mobile" (1957) "The Concentration City" (1957) "Track 12" (1958) "Zone of Terror" (1960) "The Sound-Sweep" (1960) "The Voices of Time" (1960) "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961) "Deep End" (1961) "Mr F. is Mr F." (1961) "Billennium" (1962) "Minus One" (1963) "The Recognition" (1967) " The Day of Forever" (1967) "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) "Venus Smiles" (1971)
Short story collections	The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962) Billennium (1962) Passport to Eternity (1963) The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1963) The Terminal Beach (1964) The Impossible Man (1966) The Overloaded Man (1967) The Disaster Area (1967) The Day of Forever (1967) Vermilion Sands (1971) Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971) Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories (1976) The Best of J. G. Ballard (1977) The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1978) The Venus Hunters (1980) Myths of the Near Future (1982) The Voices of Time (1985) Memories of the Space Age (1988) War Fever (1990) The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 (2006) The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 2 (2006)
Essays, reviews and interviews	A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996) Extreme Metaphors (2012)
Autobiography	Miracles of Life (2008)
Film adaptations	When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) Crash! (1971) Empire of the Sun (1987) Crash (1996) The Atrocity Exhibition (2001) Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude (2002) High-Rise (2015)

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