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Title: Crash: A Novel Author: J. G. Ballard Rating: Not available Avg. Score: 4 Submit Comment Hits: 54

Review of Crash: A Novel

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Comments for Crash: A Novel

• Posted on 2008-09-12
  A Difficult Book on the Problem of Modernity
  
  'Crash' is essentially a cautionary tale concerning the vapidity of modernity and the increased blurring of technology and society. Ballard's book is inhuman, both morally and metaphysically. Morally, because few of the characters have any scruples about double-crossing one another, using one another and abusing one another (with the possible - slight - exception of the main protaganist who is also, curiously, called 'Ballard'). Metaphysically, because the automobile (and the aeroplane) become characters themselves; they represent the third party in the ménage à trois' that repeatedly crop up every few pages (in fact, the reader represents a fourth, voyeuristic, party - another participant in the bizarre sexual encounters). In this sense, the car takes on an identity of its own and enters into human relationships. Or rather, the human beings become more machine-like. Hence, the contents of the book is inhuman on several different levels. A fascinating book, but altogether difficult to read due to its constant sexual encounters which, at first, is something of a novelty, but in the end it becomes the height of banality. Of course, this is all part of Ballard's strange psychological game. A strange, psychological book.
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2008-08-06
  Repetitive, taboo for the sake of being taboo, overly-long.
  
  I really wanted to read this as a darkly-poetic statement about the direction in which our technology is taking us and/or alienation and the desire for connection (physical or otherwise), but was just too personally alienated (perhaps intentionally?) by all the issues I mentioned in the title-line to do so. I can appreciate the power of creating characters the reader doesn't entirely relate to, whether for the purpose of exploring a taboo or some sort of disjuncture or any other desired intellectual terrain, but the author's repetition and lack of major progression made it hard to even appreciate this book as an intellectual exercise. I had to push myself to complete it.
  
  I gave it two stars because of Ballard's use of language (he creates some powerfully repugnant analogies/allegories) and exploration of ideas. However, intellectual exercise, alone, does not a successful novel make for this reader.
  Score: 2
• Posted on 2008-06-17
  GOVT 490 for Prof. Miller
  
  Technology and sex in J. G. Ballard's "Crash"
  "Crash" is Ballard's composition about a perverse obsession of the integration of death, sexuality, and technology, specifically the motor vehicle. The book is filled with dramatic visions of perverted sexual acts, nearly every single act occurs in a vehicle.
  The book begins with the death of the most pivotal character Vaughan. He is the catalyst for all of the events throughout the book. His demented obsession with car crashes and the injuries they cause on the human body, specifically the genitalia, is the driving force for everyone else in the story's manic obsession with similar things. After the introduction explains how and why Vaughan died the way he did it retreats in time back to right before he meets the main character, which turns out to be Ballard himself.
  The impetus for the meeting between the two is a accidental car crash that Ballard is in that is caused by speeding and wet roadways. This accident causes the death of a young man and injures the young man's wife who happens to be a doctor. The two meet many times afterwards and eventually begin having an affair. However their affair only works when they are within or near a car. This melding of the car and sex is a central theme throughout the book and the cars are envisioned as sexual objects themselves despite being inanimate objects. This continues to expand as the visions of two cars wrecking into each other are explained in the same way as a sexual act. It seems that in this story Ballard is saying the two acts are the same.
  The story continually returns to Vaughan's obsession with car accident damaged bodies, car accidents, sex, Elizabeth Taylor, her death and Vaughan's own death in a car accident together. Throughout the entire time Ballard knew Vaughan the man had been planning the car accident that would kill the actress and himself. Trying to discern which injuries would be the best for her to receive in the accident and what type of accident would be the best to cause those injuries. The whole thing was an act of sex to Vaughan and to make it even more sexual he wanted to hit and kill her as she was having an orgasm with the rental limo driver.
  Vaughan's obsessions are infectious to all the people around him and cause their increasingly perverse sexual predilections. Even in his death he pushes those people who crowded around him in life to be pushed further along with their own obsessions. The story shows the blurring line between where a persons body ends and technology
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2008-06-13
  GOVT 490/Professor 490/Nick E
  
  Nicolas E
  Professor Char Miller
  Paper 5
  June 12, 2008
  
  Crash
  
  The book Crash by J.G. Ballard depicts a clear connection between the evolution of technology and the human mind. With in each chapter the reader is confronted with raw human emotions and how technology enhances and advances the understanding of human emotions. The book is divided into several chapters in order for the reader to understand the hidden notion of the book. Each stage depicts the evolution of the two main protagonists.
  The book describes, in detail, the bizarre events of the two main protagonists; Ballard and Vaughan. These characters are able to connect based on a similar way of thinking. These two characters are not only able to connect in an out of the ordinary way but thrive and advance in their ever quest for the ultimate rush. Based on the book the ultimate rush is an event or events of pure raw emotion like a car crash and technology enables them to become sexually arouse.
  The notion of the ultimate rush is based on several stages that each character experienced and altered their way of thinking. This concept is especially important for the character Ballard. For Ballard his reality is changed after being in a car accident that not only injures his body but also kills a passenger in the other car. From that moment on Ballard has a different perspective on how to view people with injuries and or scars physical, psychological, and emotional. The accident made him realize how people really feel plus how technology plays a vital role manipulating people.
  Another interesting aspect supporting the main idea is the connection of Vaughn and Ballard. On a regular day to day human interaction these two characters don't posses any kind of similarities. It is only when they realize about wanting to experience that ultimate rush they unite. By the use of the automobile or photography these two characters are able to utilize and manipulate technology for their own unusual sexual appetite.
  The third aspect of the book supporting the main idea is their weird fascination with descriptions, close ups, and details about their visual emotions. Through out the book we encounter countless detail descriptions about what they saw and how they felt at that moment. This notion of being more in tune with your surrounding is clear evidence about how these characters felt when dealing with other people; merely test subjects. Both characters wanted to take everything inward in order to store data and recreate different scenarios. This concept also supports the use of technology by having a great amount of pictures about celebrities, scars, amputees, etc.
  Finally the most important aspect of the book relies mostly on how these two characters dealt and reasoned with reality. These two characters are a product of a world relying more and more in technology and abandoning the human element. This is why Ballard and Vaughn feel drawn towards the most extreme aspect of life and death. On one side sexuality is represented as the enjoyment of life and the human spirit. Furthermore car accidents could be portrait as the means towards death and the end of reality as we know it. Technology enables these two characters two combined both elements in order to feel alive and experience the ultimate rush.
  An additional aspect of the book is how Ballard is able to describe in a clinical and incisive detail a new territory of a surreal inner landscape. The most important continent on this novel relates to our culture's obsessions with celebrities, automobiles, progress, body image, pornography, social conformity. The ability to combine all of these variables is what makes this novel so peculiar and interesting.
  
  
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2008-04-07
  Sex and Car Crashes
  
  I first read J.G. Ballard's "Crash" in early 1997, in anticipation of the release of the film adaptation by David Cronenberg. It stuck with me--it's the kind of novel that is impossible to forget--and now, eleven years later, I have just finished my second reading.
  
  As austere and steely as the automobiles that the characters live out their sexual fantasies within, "Crash" is a mesmerizingly original work with a moody atmosphere in its writing of highways, car parts, airports and sex acts so descriptive one has no trouble visualizing the setting and actions throughout.
  
  The plot is thin in the conventional sense, and the characters could best be described as robotically functional, but that's the point; in place of human emotions are metallicized shells of people who are scarcely any different than the non-living technology surrounding them. Their increasing fetishism over cars, crashes, and the scars and wounds caused by them is a result of the world's decreasing dependence for face-to-face compassion and interaction, and their only acts of expression are through their exploration of sexuality.
  
  It is amazing to note that "Crash" was published thirty-five years ago (in 1973). This novel could have been written in 2008 and virtually no changes would need to be made in updating it for the present-day. In fact, with one of its themes being the onslaught of technology over communication, one could argue that the novel works far better now than it possibly could have decades ago. Also of note is the prominent use of Elizabeth Taylor as a story point (a character's ultimate goal is to crash into the iconic actress and kill them both). Did Taylor have to approve of this before the book could go to print? Seems potentially dangerous for her, but it only adds to the reality of the book.
  
  "Crash" is, at once, fascinating, involving, graphic, erotic, perverse, scary, gross, multilayered and provocative. J.G. Ballard's overuse of certain words tends to get repetitious and tedious in his descriptions, particularly in the second half, but that is the only major quibble to be found in a novel unlike any other ever written. It is not for all tastes, but for the adventurous reader, it's close to stunning.
  
  Score: 4