I payed 24.98 minus my student 2 dollar discount for Crash. People in book stores tend to condescend one purchasing Crash. Ballardians are a persecuted people of substantial genius. Perhaps it was my insisting on the 2 dollar discount that had me so hated.
Crash, described by many as Ballards masterpiece, is a sick mixture of sex and machine and death set in the pyschogeographies that
Ballard was so fascinated by: airport terminals, business parks, TV studios, and highways.
In Crash our narrator and ex TV scientist Vaughan, prowl the expressways looking for horror crashes to get off on. Vaughan is a kind of post modern Kurtzesque character, once a talk show host but scarred by a car crash, he's obsessed with roadside grotesques and the death wish of penetrating Elizabeth Taylor in one final car smash. The Human in Crash has been replaced by a sexual machine stuck in an ongoing nightmare of death and sex. Celebrities and consumers are united by technologies promise of sexual transgression in the car crash.
Ballards writing has a horrifying style about it, graphic and violent, death images evoke our attention and we tend to repulse in their sick beauty. There is also an idea with Ballard that he can take us closer to reality But there is no reality in Crash just as there is nothing real in Baudrillard's simulations. The Crash continues even today. Reality is constantly pilling up and dissimulating.
Crash is a dark and perverse introduction into Ballards world. High Rise, Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes are more entertaining and less of a challenge on the neurotransmitters.
There is an interesting blogg with photo's of the now passed J,G Ballards house in Shepperton. His car still sits in the front yard. It is interesting to see the place where Ballard wrote his fantastic novels, Check them out at;
http://undergroundmangeomatt.blogspot.com/2009/09/ballardian-ground-zero-jg-ballards.html
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