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Mar 21, 2008

Chris rated it:

There are very few movies even remotely interesting enough to warrant reading the book it was adapted from; but back in the glorious years of the late 1990’s, when I saw David Cronenberg’s masterful adaptation of “Crash”, I knew there was absolutely no way I could go wrong with the book. Let’s face it, there is absolutely no way that you can sit through the entirety of the film and not get it on with whoever happens to be in close proximity, but just make sure there is someone there, even if it More...

4 comments like (14 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2008

Melanie rated it:

Reading this book wore me out. I like Ballard, I think he's a writer who really gets technology, modernity, isolation, etc., and I'm pretty non-judgmental about even sort of far-out fetishes, but what kept flashing through my brain was GRATUITOUS GRATUITOUS WHEN WILL THIS BOOK END ARRGH. And I don't even mean that it was gratuitous with the sex-and-accidents stuff (although it was)--the blunt, increasingly inelegant repetition of Ballard's arguments made a compelling idea, after a certain point More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Mar 03, 2008

Joshua rated it:

Less of a conventional narrative arc-based novel and more of an exercise in rhythm and repetition of key phrases and imagery, Crash is not pleasurable reading. Nor, I figure, is it intended to be. It is extremely challenging, primarily owing to the graphic sex and violence, but also due to the clinical language Ballard employs to disengage the reader from the characters and their actions. The injuries are as distant as an anatomy textbook's illustrations. The sex is robotic. The word "mu More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 26, 2011

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE rated it:

This & Ballard's "Atrocity Exhibition" were the peak of his psychopathology of urban living novels. When Cronenberg was making his movie version in Toronto in 1995, I had an acquaintance who was an actor auditioning for the main role ask the casting folks if an obscure composer (myself) wd be considered for the soundtrack. Nope, Howard Shore was always the man. I'd wanted to record samples of all machine noises & substitute them for &/or underlay them w/ all human sounds. Anyway, w More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 22, 2011

Jason rated it:

Defiantly transgressive, which I can certainly respect. After all, it's better to provoke a negative response in a reader (disgust, anger, etc.) than no response at all. Ballard is clearly trying to disgust and anger his readers and does so in a memorable way that would later be coopted by writers like Chuck Pahalniuk.

Having said this, this book is less satisfying than it ought to be. Lengthy, graphic descriptions of sex and violence are appropriately graphic yet inappropriately leng More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 02, 2011

Evan rated it:

This book is a sausage made out of roadkill...and glass shards. And forced similes and metaphors strewn about the highway, ugly as a car wreck.

So much semen is spurted and wiped on the dashboard instrument panels that I ceased after awhile to wonder or care how our motorists could even read the dials.

So many commas and clauses litter the paragraphs like so many slashed half-moon rubber tires lining the interstate that one hopes Ballard did not race past the tollbooths and More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

May 13, 2011

dara rated it:

I read this five years ago, and I hated it. I hated it fiercely. I recall thinking it better suited for a short story at best. I am almost tempted to read it again to see if I would still loathe it so strongly or if my reading tastes have changed. In the meantime, I'll just provide what I wrote about it at age seventeen:

I disliked this book so intensely that I feel I have to warn people. I bought this book because Amazon recommended it after I rated some of Chuck Palahniuk's books. T More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Louise rated it:

Where to start... I've never read a book like this before and doubt I will again. It's one big, pornographic car crash of a novel. It's dangerous, it's obscene, it's filthy, it's exhilerating, reading it makes you feel as if you're driving too fast but once you start you can't take your foot off the accelerator, you have to keep going until you hit the flyover wall at the end.

The story is told through the eyes of the narrator, named after the author, who meets 'nightmare angel of the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Megan rated it:

This is another one of those books that forces you to think about things you really don't want to think about. I'm not even sure if I liked it, but when words on paper make your emotional reaction so intense, that's good writing. Crash is about a man named James who gets into a car crash, then meets a man named Vaughan who introduces him to the underworld of people who are turned on by car crashes. James, his wife, the woman whose car James crashed into, and Vaughan all get involved together wit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 30, 2007

Tosh rated it:

I re-read this novel recently, and it didn't grab me like the first read. But what should be pointed out is that Ballard has a vision of the world that is right on the mark. I find his writing not that interesting, but his sense of the 'modern' world is totally correct. I think "Concrete Island" is his masterpiece.

Saying that, and living in Los Angeles, cars are totally ertoic. And I imagine a car accidnet is some sort of release of some sort. There is nothing more More...

8 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 18, 2008

JBedient rated it:

If you've never read Ballard, and your curious, this is the book you want to start with. I won't get into the plot or the antiseptic, yet haunting, prose. I'll just say that all the motifs of Ballard are here, and they are presented with crystal clear precision, with touches of what I'd call industrial surrealism.

Some people find the book a little cold and detached -- but that's the whole point -- Ballard is not a Garcia Marquez, he's not painting a romantic picture full of pastels(I More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2012

Sean rated it:

I recently discovered the work of a social critic Paul Virilio and his notion that technology cannot advance without creating new forms of disaster. The advent of the train gave us derailment. The airplane brought us the midair collision.

According to Ballard, the automobile brought us weird sex in smashed up cars. And lots of it. These characters are hollow and lack the warmth generally associated with being a mammal. They crawl over one another searching for a connection that technol More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 12, 2011

Remittance rated it:

Written in 1973, Crash may be one of the most difficult books you ever read or listen to. The author bravely names his protagonist 'Ballard' and then slowly evolves him as a man who, after being in a car crash, grows erotically obsessed with them and the damage they do to bodies. He become a member of a group who are all aroused by the violence of car crashes and the transformation effected by cataclysm to both human body and machine.

The story does harken back to Mary Shelly's Frankens More...

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Jul 11, 2011

Paul rated it:

Let me start by saying that i really wanted to like this book. I love Chuck Palahinuick and i know he draws a lot of influence from Ballard. So i'm trying to get into some of his stuff and figured i would start with his most widely known work (perhaps next to Empire of the Sun). The idea of the car fasination theme was intreging and i really really really wanted this book to be good.

But it wasn't.

I read it in one evening and i have never been so gratefull for my ability t More...

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Jun 16, 2011

Jan-Maat added it

The edition I read came with an introduction by the author in which we find:
...we live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass-merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality. More...

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May 25, 2011

Nick rated it:

A prophetic and technical masterpiece.

Some notes...

-11: "I watched the blood irrigate her white blouse."
-12: "The intimate time and space of a single human being had been fossilized for ever in this web of chromium knives and frosted glass." - this sentence isn't ungrammatical, but it assumes and discards metaphors as it proceeds. Another way to put it is, it mixes metaphors.
-13: "The long triangular grooves on the car had been More...

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Jul 11, 2010

Jack rated it:

A deeply disturbing book, predicated on the heightened sexuality of those who have suffered - or even seek out - near-fatal automobile crashes. This was the basis for David Cronenburg's movie, which I have never seen, nor do I much want to after reading Ballard's original, inventive, and upsetting novel.

James and his wife, bored in their marriage, are given to ever more extreme sexual games to re-engage their diminished passion. Simple adultery is no longer sufficient. When J More...

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May 07, 2010

Joselito rated it:

For me, my car is just a machine that takes me and my passengers from one place to another in comfort. I am not unaware, however, that for some people a car is much more than a means of transport. For many, it is considered a status symbol. Maybe even an integral part of one's personality. A young man, for instance, can consider a nice car as a necessary adjunct to attract the opposite sex, so he can take her with him from one place to another. Indeed, a car can sometimes be sexy, and add to its More...

1 comment like

Mar 21, 2008

Mike rated it:

I don't HATE this book but, boy, what a struggle it was to complete. Normally, I like surrealist fiction, normally I read good books in a couple days.

Crash took me nearly TWO YEARS to complete. It just seemed, excuse the pun, a little up its own arse and that gratuitously sleazy anal-sex 'climax'. Crash might be one of the best anti-horror novels I've ever not enjoyed. I just don't think it was supposed to be horrific, I suspect I was supposed to go, "What a great story." h

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 01, 2011

Andrewcharles420 rated it:

I was motivated to read this book to try and understand the author's eponymous writing style, but I'm afraid if I hear a book described as "Ballardian", I'll probably interpret that simply as unpleasant-to-read. It reminded me a lot of William S. Burroughs, whose writing I am also not fond of. I found Crash unpleasant because I am not perceptibly sexually attracted to cars, and don't think of car crashes as sexual events between technology and flesh. This made it incredibly difficult f More...

0 comments like

Jul 09, 2011

Aaron rated it:

What interests me most about Crash is that despite J.G. Ballard’s capabilities for beautiful and evocative storytelling, I've never read a story that works so hard at being ugly. It almost seems like some sort of bizarre writing exercise that was published by mistake. Crash is a novel so heavily packed with morbidly clinical descriptions of gratuitous sex and violence that it's nothing short of surreal.

Now I've always considered myself a man with a strong stomach. Although Crash cont More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 13, 2011

Yorkshiresoul rated it:

I can't say that I enjoyed Ballard's take on human sexuality and technology, but perhaps that is the point. All of the main characters are without warmth or compassion, they are filled with sexual heat though as they explore the deviant possibilities thrown up by motor vehicle accidents. They are cold people, sure they have a lot of sex, but it is sex without kindness, without feeling, without any other emotion than base desire.

Ballard said about his reasons for writing the n More...

0 comments like

Jan 18, 2011

Matt rated it:

I steered clear (pun intended) of this one after seeing a botched film adaptation by the otherwise trusty hand of David Cronenberg, but something about that cover and the potential for high fucked-upedness (the criterion by which I select po-mo fiction) proved to be too much. Spent a sleazy NY train ride from JFK to points north engrossed in this shit, in disbelief at the kinds of sacrosanct thought-wad shooting from mind and hands of J.G. Ballard. Lots of repetitive British nouns to drive you More...

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Sep 21, 2010

Patrick rated it:

Crash the novel bears nothing in common with the awful "critically-acclaimed" movie about racism. This novel was controversial for different reasons: Ballard showcases a world of weirdos who reenact famous car crashes and who eroticize both the crashing of cars and the scarring produced as a result of them. This fetishizing of car crashes is called symphorophilia. Ballard writes in his characteristically descriptive prose but the writing here seems more sensationalized, more viscera More...

1 comment like

May 14, 2011

J. rated it:

Lots of other people who are a lot better than me have written all kinds of things about this novel. I will say this: The first hundred pages of the novel are relatively un-engaging. It's almost entirely narrative voice with almost zero dialogue interaction between characters. This was especially difficult for me because that's my favorite part of any book--watching how the characters interact with each other. So the concept is fascinating, the narrative is layered upon inspection and flat on th More...

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Aug 07, 2010

The Book Nazi rated it:

This Novel portrays a sensationalized view of the effects of technology on human psychology, for me it was was
a startling portrait of a fetish subculture. The story takes place in a harsh dystopia where people were devoid of emotion. They wereknocked out of their detached stupor only when con fronted with the grotesque aftermath of car crashes: the twisted metal and broken glass, and the gruesome injuries inflicted on the vehicles’ passengers. One of the main characters sees the combination More...

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Feb 25, 2009

Mark rated it:

This book is an abject failure. It fails to entertain or develop as a story and it fails as a cautionary tale about man's relationship with machines (which I *think* is supposed to be the point).

The protagonist gets in a car wreck and afterwards finds that he becomes extremely aroused whenever he's near a car or looking at accidents. The widow of the man he wrecked into starts exhibiting similar behavior so they start driving dangerously and having sex. Then the protagonist meet More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2011

James rated it:

There is something inherently fascinating about the way technology is changing us. It is literally morphing us physically, altering the experience of being human, and forcing us to evolve to accommodate the rapidly changing world around us.

J.G. Ballard's Crash is considered avante-guarde shock fiction. As is the hypnotic, brilliant, 1996 film adaption directed by David Cronenberg, starring James Spader, Holly Hunter, Deborah Kara Unger and Elias Koteas. But both are really visionary More...

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Mar 14, 2011

Carl rated it:

Did I persevere and finish a book I basically hated? For my sins, yes! Books with no real merit I will abandon, whereas this wasn’t lacking in skill, it just left me feeling weird and ill. In this fantasy world (I can only assume Ballard was trying to push the boundaries as far as he possibly could, leaving any sense of reality way behind) everyone, seemingly without exception, gets perverse pleasure out of car crashes. So, you’re not aroused by the idea of breaking limbs in a motorway pile-up? More...

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Sep 03, 2010

Nate rated it:

I'd heard going in that this novel of eroticized destruction (of automobiles, bodies, is there a difference?) would become somewhat redundant by the end. I mean, it has pretty much exactly one system to discuss: the triangulation of alienated modern life (circa the 70s) between sex, bodily harm, and automotive engineering. Yet the first quarter or so was riveting like a shattered steering column through the lungs. After that, Crash does ebb into a kind of monotony, but a mesmerizing, calculated More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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