Crash

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I toyed for awhile with three stars because after a certain point Ballard's over-the-top conceits and constant repetition of disgusting imagery and dichotomies earned a begrudging admiration from me for his commitment, outrageousness and stubbornness for sticking with them. At some points in his career, Ballard claimed that Crash was a "cautionary tale", a view that he would later regret, asserting that it is in fact "a psychopathic hymn. It seemed like the thematic impact of this material, with its razor-thin narrative, might have been stronger in short story form. Catherine, whom Vaughan has followed in his car on several occasions, begins to fantasize about him and James having sex.

Ballard’s arpeggiated sentences and intense repetition intentionally drive the book’s thesis straight into your lobe, the allegorical car/commentary destroying your gray matter. The consensus reads: "Despite the surprisingly distant, clinical direction, Crash's explicit premise and sex is classic Cronenberg territory. In this magic pool, lifting from her throat like a rare discharge of fluid from the mouth of a remote and mysterious shrine, I saw my own reflection, a mirror of blood, semen and vomit, distilled from a mouth whose contours only a few minutes before had drawn steadily against my penis.The film was still banned by Westminster Council, meaning it could not be shown in any cinema in the West End, even though they had earlier given special permission for the film's premiere, and it was easily seen in nearby Camden. A few years ago a group of young men deliberately piloted aeroplanes into a number of buildings in the USA killing all in all 2,996 people.

In actuality the effect of this constant repetition is not one of a sense of clinical precision, but one of unwieldiness and largesse. At AMC's Century City location in Los Angeles, two security guards were present, one inside the auditorium and one outside. Robert Vaughan, an acquaintance of Ballard’s who had planned to die that day, taking famed actor Elizabeth Taylor with him. concerns Vaughan, a scientist who experiments with sexual possibilities inherent in automobile accidents.

G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments. Apart from the fact that I couldn't help laughing as Ballard piled on ever-increasingly disgusting perversities and situations involving bodily fluids within the confines of the auto, I began to think the following passage might be clueing me into the possibility that this was an intentional satire. Front cover lightly and unevenly sunned, else very near fine in brad-bound plastic wrappers with inserted front and rear cover illustrations. the ultimate role of Crash is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.

He studied medicine before turning to writing, and has had great success as an exponent of British "new wave" (now "old hat" ?J.G Ballard must've been dodging torch-wielding priests back in the days, because this is a dirty, dirty book. Needless to say, the ultimate role of Crash is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape. A group of people, thrown together quite by chance, having the same sick obsession is the premise of the novel and its least convincing component. When then-jury president Francis Ford Coppola announced the award "for originality, for daring and for audacity", he stated that it had been a controversial choice and that certain jury members "did abstain very passionately".