Crash
Book description
The definitive cult, post-modern novel - a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism - reissued with a new introduction from Zadie Smith.
When Ballard, our narrator, smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Crash as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Cronenberg’s 1996 movie adaptation (not the one that won many Oscars and is bad) captures Ballard’s sensual mechanical fetishism and apocalyptic consumerism perfectly. It is a 120-minute-long sex scene in a carousel of mangled metal. It is probably the best adaptation of prose to film I can think of, which is bolstered by the sheer strength of the book itself. Crash (again, not the 2006 one, the car crash sex one) is by far Cronenberg’s horniest feature, and that’s saying something. Uh. I didn’t mean to just talk about the movie. I should probably talk about the book. The book…
From Leighton's list on to completely ruin your day.
Pornographic and repulsive even by 2022 standards, J.G. Ballard’s mind-bendingly twisted, troubling novel centers on a writer caught up in a cult of self-obsessed "symphorophiliacs" who restage and sexually fetishize famous, especially ghoulish car crashes. Ballard offers an unsparing vision of a future in which humans and machines meld, anything and everything gets objectified, and compulsive sex becomes utterly impersonal. And who should turn up in the novel but screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor with whom the spooky character “Dr. Robert Vaughn” is so enthralled that he fantasizes dying with her in an orgasmic head-on collision? Even boundary-pushing maverick movie director…
From Stephen's list on featuring Hollywood giants as characters.
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