Rating: 
Summary: crash
Review: the very definition of awful. i read alot and even with bad books i press myself to never leave a book unfinished but this came close to pushing me over the edge. another review here described it perfectly as saying that, in all of it's meaningless perversion, it was "about as sexy as a prostate examination". the author using the words "chromium" and "globules" about 8 times a page doesnt make it any more likeable. the book goes nowhere, it only disgusts you with intense details about scenes that have no merit or value whatsoever other than to show you what a pervert the main character is.
As for this being recommended along with chuck palahniuk novels; palahniuk fans should steer clear of this trash. ive read all of palahniuk's books, some twice, and it was on amazon.com that i decided to buy crash because it was described as being similar to palahniuk's writing. i found that in the entire novel, there is one paragraph that is at all similar to palahniuk: the first paragraph in chapter 17. its maybe a third of a page, so go to a book store and read that chapter there but do not spend money on this book unless its to use it as toilet paper or to start a fire. man it gets me angry just thinking about it...
Rating: 
Summary: read the essay by Baudrillard in Simulacrum and Simulation
Review: I just wanted to write to recommend Baudrillard's essay on Crash, the only really first-rate critical text I'm aware of, though perhaps there is also good recent stuff. Baudrillard responds well to a lot of the reviews and misunderstandings on this page. Of course Ballard's style, plot and characterization are not that of a conventional novel; that's obvious enough from the get-go. Baudrillard makes some of Ballard's techniques explicit. According to the French critic, "anagrammatization" and "incessant figures of circulation" are the basis of Ballard's style (i.e. it may not just be "bad writing"), and there is "no affect behind all that, no psychology, no flux or desire, no libido or death drive" (i.e. no "character" in the normal sense, which is typical of Ballard anyway). It may seem a bit counter-intuitive to say that the characters have no desire and no death-drive, but the point is that these traits, to the extent that they may be there in the book, are not represented in a recognizeable fashion. For Baudrillard it's about exposing the "economies of signs," a rather over-theoretical description, except that Ballard writes pretty much the same thing himself. No doubt, in mentioning anagram, Ba(udri)llard wishes he had written the novel himself.
Rating: 
Summary: The extreme of Ballard's ouevre
Review: In his 1995 introduction to 'Crash' Ballard explains that the traditional methods of the writer- linear narrative, examination of the subtle nuances of social behavour and personal relationships in a self-sufficient, self enclosed world with the author, like an examiner, knowing all the questions in advance- are no longer suitable to chronicle the morality and culture of the late 20th Century. Instead, he proposes that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing, has no moral stance and offers the reader the contents of his own head. A set of imaginative postulations, analagous to a scientist offering hypothesis to deal with an unknown terrain.
Given this, one should not expect Crash to be a conventional novel. When it first emerged, the hallucionatory auto-eroticism of the novel, centering around a film maker who becomes transfixed by the erotic experiments that Vaughan, a 'hoodlum scientist' and 'nightmare angel of the expressways' performs on crash victims did not appeal to everyone. The 23 year old Martin Amis described the novel as 'possibly the most extreme example in fiction of how beautiful and lavishly someone can write 70,000 words of vicious nonsense'.
Now, more than 30 years on, the novel has garnered cult status and certainly makes interesting reading for the way Ballard constructs a nightmare world in what Malcom Bradbury of the New York Times described as the 'deprived spaces of modern life' - the motion sculptures of urban expressways and airport surroundings. The prose describes in intense detail the subconcious fixation with car crash aftermaths, linking sex and the technology of the machine in a sinister coagulation of semen and the smells of automobile wreckage. As the characters become increasngly desensitised from the scenes they witness, the sex scenes become less 'sexual' and more natural - Ballard describes the scene when Vaughan maes love to the narrator's wife as following a 'perverse logic'.
The reader becomes drawn into this world, and possibly desensitised to the auto erotic violence too. Then out again on completion of the novel. It is a well written exposition of a sensuous, scarred, nightmare world at the far extremes of our imagination. But that is about the extent of it. There is little content in the novel to retain in the reader's imagination beyond this. So in a sense, 'vicious nonsense' is an apt summary of Crash.
Rating:
Summary: Is it genius, or just strange?
Review: While the idea behind crash is certainly original enough to give Ballard props, the book itself, at least to me,was almost one-dimensional. The point of the whole sex/auto/violence thing, while an interesting analogy and comment, can't sustain itself over the length of the book, because there's not a lot else there to hold everything together. The graphic content just seems ot hang there sometimes. To that end, the book is far from brilliant; it's just weird and quirky. Worth reading? Yeah, why not? It's well-written and, as noted earlier, certainly original, and about as different as you can get. But I wouldn't put it on the "immortal literature" shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative, intriguing and a "different" read...
Review: I just finished this novel last night and I am really quite conflicted when it comes down to what I should think about it. This story was the most strange thing I have ever read, and definitely the most explicit.
The idea of sex and car crashes is something that I can't really understand, but in today's modern society, I can see how people might begin to use technology in unconventional ways. In this novel, the author attempts to show us how we all have the potential to develop an unhealthy obsession with technology. By showing us a group of car crash/sex hedonists, J.G. Ballard is able to portray this concept quite well.
Although I was a little annoyed by the constant presence of the word "chromium" throughout the novel, I realize that it was used deliberately to convey a message about how obsessed these people truly are. The hallucinary style in which this book was written also helps contribute to the developement of a very weird and unique mood.
This is by no means a pleasant or feel-good story, and if that is what you are looking for, avoid CRASH. If you possess an open mind and are looking for something that is considerably out of the ordinary, this might be something to check out. I highly recommend it, but it still made me a bit squeamish.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This book has got to be one of the better books I have read this year so far. Ballard is a literary genius. This novel is very disturbing, but that is what makes it so good. It is about the union of sex and the technology that is the automobile. Ok its about a lot more than that, but that is a basis. You will notice that Ballard's style of writing is very different than what you probably normally read. Which is why a number of reviewers think that his writing is flawed. Its not though if anything its almost flawless
Rating:
Summary: crash
Review: the very definition of awful. i read alot and even with bad books i press myself to never leave a book unfinished but this came close to pushing me over the edge. another review here described it perfectly as saying that, in all of it's meaningless perversion, it was "about as sexy as a prostate examination". the author using the words "chromium" and "globules" about 8 times a page doesnt make it any more likeable. the book goes nowhere, it only disgusts you with intense details about scenes that have no merit or value whatsoever other than to show you what a pervert the main character is.
As for this being recommended along with chuck palahniuk novels; palahniuk fans should steer clear of this trash. ive read all of palahniuk's books, some twice, and it was on amazon.com that i decided to buy crash because it was described as being similar to palahniuk's writing. i found that in the entire novel, there is one paragraph that is at all similar to palahniuk: the first paragraph in chapter 17. its maybe a third of a page, so go to a book store and read that chapter there but do not spend money on this book unless its to use it as toilet paper or to start a fire. man it gets me angry just thinking about it...
Rating:
Summary: This is what science fiction is all about. Not Star Wars.
Review: Ballard wrote "Crash" some 30 years ago. However it is relevant today as a sci-fi piece that explores many interesting issues in ways that most sci-fi glosses over. It is a fascinating book, offering no opinions but only a voice in a passive tone, exploring the depths of man and machine. The idea of the two combining, becoming one piece, is at times the core of the science Ballard explores. The people in this novel mutilate themselves in reckless behavior and with little regard for their life as they seek to bring a bit closer the feeling of having their skin, their body, melded with the automobile.Before Luke Skywalker, before Captain Kirk, this is science and fiction. But how fiction is it?
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Be Fooled
Review: I've read a lot of books from various genres and written by crazy authors. I have to say though, that this book is without a doubt the worst book I have ever read. The story is completely disjointed, and you have no connection to the characters (you neither hate them, nor love them). I absolutely did not care what happened at the end of this novel. Given all this, the reason I allowed this novel to have two stars is because of the lack of emotions in the characters and the storyline - this seems to be a central theme. All the characters are striving to have some kind of emotional attachment to SOMETHING, whether it be cars, or people, or whatever. The author has done a spectacular job of extracting emotion from the characters and the story. This being said, the story is so terrible that I would never recommend this novel to anyone.
|
