Crash - Softcover

J. G. Ballard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099334917 ISBN 13: 9780099334910

Publisher: Vintage, 1995

Synopsis

In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile 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 than 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.

A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.

About this title

Review:

J. G. Ballard's graphic, violent novel is controversial wherever it is read, even on Amazon.com's own Web page! The book's characters are obsessed with automobile accidents and are determined to narrate the horrors of the car crash as luridly as possible. In the words of the novel's protagonist, the wounds caused by automobile collisions are "the keys to a new sexuality born from a perverse technology." Read this novel and learn why David Cronenberg, who had previously adapted Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch for the screen, fought to turn it into his latest film.

About the Author:

J. G. Ballard is the author of numerous books, including Empire of the Sun, Concrete Island, and The Kindness of Women. He is revered as one of the most important writers of fiction to address the consequences of twentieth-century technology. His latest book is Super-Cannes. He died in 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0099334917
• ISBN 13: 9780099334910
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Illustrator: Clare Godfrey