Crash (1973)

Author:  J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 185

“The intimate time and space of a single human being had been fossilized for ever in this web of chromium knives and frosted glass.”

Crash is a subversive novel about a film-maker named James Ballard (the same as the author) who meets a deviant named Robert Vaughan.  The longer Ballard spends in Vaughan’s company the more influenced by him he becomes.  He's soon happily entwined in a secret world of car crashes and illicit sex, and as a result his own sexual ideals begin to change dramatically.  Robert Vaughan is a character seen previously in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970).  He was a perverted weirdo there and he's much the same here.  He surrounds himself with like-minded individuals and the reasons for doing so become clear the more you read.

There's no doubting J. G. Ballard’s ability to write good prose, he has a unique and commanding style, but there's only so many times I can read about man-sauce running down the cracks of car seats before I begin to get very bored of it (the exact number is once).  In fact, novels that rely on graphic sex bore me completely.  It was the knowledge that Ballard (the author) uses language in a very overtly offensive way that kept me reading, not the story or the hateful characters who were each flawed but not in a beneficial, sympathetic way.

Ballard has pointed out in interviews that the glamorisation and sexual means used to sell fast cars to the public is way out of control.  I completely agree.  How many times have you seen an attractive model draped seductively across the bonnet of a car?  The darker side of car ownership is the death toll associated with misuse.  We accept automobiles as a part of daily life, even lust after them, but they're as much instruments of murder and manslaughter as they are of convenience.  The later part tends to be forgotten—or more precisely pushed out of mind.  We put our children in them.  We fuck in them.  We cry in them.  We die in them.  Crash attempts to remind on every page that sex and death are inextricably linked and that one can be a means to the other, and vice versa.  It’s a largely boring but superbly written endeavour.

2 logic and reason are not the same thing out of 5

The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

Author: J. G. Ballard | Page Count: 184 

'The blitzkriegs will be fought out on the spinal battlefields, in terms of the postures we assume, of our traumas mimetized in the angle of a wall or balcony.'

The Atrocity Exhibition is one one of the finest examples of the English experimental novel. There's no obvious start/middle/end structure. You can flick to any page and start reading to get an immediate feel for the overall style and perspective of the work; doing just that is something Ballard recommends.

The thematic merging of sexual excitement, death of celebrity, architecture and the evils of consumer society are explored as only he could, without deference to the social consciousness or exhibiting shame.

It's an obtuse book that'll only begin to make sense the more you begin to adopt his point of view and look at your own life as the protagonist views his. I'm not saying you should get your jollies watching automobile crashes or the removal of the top of Kennedy's head - I mean appreciating the minutiae of life, being aware of the lack of difference in things at their most basic level.

The protagonist, Talbert, Travis, Talbot, Traven (his name changes frequently, depending on where he is or what he's doing) looks upon a poster of a dune but the anatomist in him sees as an outsized female pudenda; the point where two walls merge can be a sexual thing; central nervous systems have been externalised as roads; the assassination of Kennedy encapsulates everything that's wrong and right with the world - not from a political point of view, but from a universal constant. It's complex but also equally rewarding, particularly the second half, if you can set aside your teachings and embrace its unique structure.

If you've ever enjoyed the works of William Burroughs or Anthony Burgess, then maybe Ballard will fit into your life and onto your shelf.

Note: I recommend the Fourth Estate edition published by Harper Collins, it has extended notes by the author that offer extra insight into the creation of many of the stories, and much of it is even more interesting than the novel.

5 roads that lead to celebrity death out of 5