by: J. G. Ballard
List Price: $14.00
Prices subject to change.
Amazon.com's Price: $11.20
You Save: $2.80 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780312420338
ISBN: 0312420331
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: October 05, 2001
Publisher: Picador
Sales Rank: 108027
Studio: Picador
Related Items:
- The Atrocity Exhibition (Flamingo Modern Classics)
- The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
- Concrete Island: A Novel
- Fight Club: A Novel
- Cocaine Nights
- see more
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com 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.
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- some new choreography of violence and collisionOver the course of his unpredictable writing career, J.G. Ballard has gone through some sick and twisted periods, and this novel is his pinnacle of shocking perversion. The premise is pretty basic and well-known, with protagonists who are sexually aroused by car crashes and who blur the line between eroticism and senseless death. The usual intellectual interpretation is that Ballard is commenting on "contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations" (that ... Read More
Rating:
- Move over, Harold Robbins. J.G.'s in da house!J.G. Ballard's Crash is a light-hearted , sexy romp thru 1970s swinging London. In tantalizing detail, it explores the lives of several hot, young hardbodies, cruisin' their vintage British rides and doin' the nasty--so what's not to love?
My recommendation? Read it with a good friend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) or be prepared to take matters into your own hands. It's that goooood!
The only reason I withheld a star was 'cause there wasn't quite enough of that droll Dr. Vaughn ... Read More
Rating:
- Human ugliness laid bare...I was traveling to London on business. Whenever I get a chance to go abroad, I try to read something "of the region." Or at least something that contains a metaphor for the trip. Reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson on my first trip to London and Edinburgh worked quite nicely. Digging into Gulliver's Travels by Swift while traveling through Sweden, a fantastic land that was completely alien to me at the time, was a perfect call. I won't discuss the mistake of trying to read The Spider's House by ... Read More
Rating:
- 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 ... Read More
Rating:
- 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, ... Read More
Browse for similar items by category:
- Qualifying Textbooks - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - General AAS
- ( B ) - Authors, A-Z - Literature & Fiction - Subjects - Books - Ballard, J.G.
- Literature & Fiction - Subjects - Books - Contemporary
- Literature & Fiction - Subjects - Books - Literary
- Literature & Fiction - Subjects - Books - General AAS
