Crash
by J. G. Ballard · first published 1973
44% recommend44% neutral13% critical
Why HN recommends it
Provocative, unsettling novel about car crashes and sexuality by a writer known for his strange, mesmerizing vision. Its tone and themes align with High-Rise and The Atrocity Exhibition.
Common criticism: Several find its sex scenes unbearable and the prose hard going.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism. When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of e
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Crash by JG Ballard
on “Ask YC: Good books to take on a week away?” ↗Crash by J.G. Ballard.
on “Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?” ↗…that time were of quite meh quality, it's possible that the running-out occurred at a 3D showing, making the ‘illusion’ story more plausible. Lastly, since J.G. Ballard is mentioned, I'll say that both ‘Crash’ and ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ are very cool. Aside from obvious connotations to real people's habits, just the atmosphere of the books is engrossing in the weirdest way. They tickle the brain in a manner…
on ““Mother Will Be Pleased”: How It Feels to Be Run over (1900)” ↗I find Ballard kind of mesmerizing but frustrating. Crash I quite enjoyed, but other short stories I often felt his concerns and subjects quite alien. I join just about everyone else in saying read him, but I would never say he was prescient, as some do. He…
on “J. G. Ballard’s Brilliant, “Not Good” Writing” ↗I'm due to re-read J.G. Ballard. "Crash" is a hard read but it predicted the way porn alienates people from each other. "The Subliminal Man" (written in 1963) touches upon some interesting themes about manipulation via technology. http://search.lores.eu/opr0207B.htm
on “Science Fiction’s Wonderful Mistakes” ↗…World comics (1971–1974). Jack Kirby - pre-Fourth World sci-fi comics (1964–1970) James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World (1978) Jane Gaskell - A Sweet, Sweet Summer (1969) J.G. Ballard - Crash (1973) J.G. Ballard - High-Rise (1975) J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition (written 1967, published 1970) J.G. Ballard - The Burning World (1964) J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World (1966) Joanna…
on “New Wave Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1964–1983” ↗I absolutely love JG Ballard. Crash is a classic, and High Rise is a fun one.
on “The Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballard” ↗…psudo-intellectualism almost on par with Lacan or Deleuze. Actually, bro the gulf war happened! And most of the book you linked is full of utter nonsense and crankery. His review of JG Ballard's novel "Crash" was the only good chapter in the whole book. Just because it was in the matrix doesn't mean that it described our world accurately at all. It's nothing but fashionable nonsense.
on “Instagram Face: The rise of selfie make-up and quest for hyper-perfection (2018)” ↗…vibe created by John Foxx's "Metamatic" [1] in 1980 (never mind his "Ultravox!" [2] in the years before that). Maybe it was Foxx though that claimed he was channelling the mood of novels like Ballard's "Crash" [3] from 1973. Computerization, synthesized music, alienation were a part of the zeitgeist of the 70's, 80's. [1] https://youtu.be/dgaLF2F5LWg [2] https://youtu.be/3vy4eZ69Tj8?t=71 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel)
on “The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk” ↗> Putting Ballard on a master’s course list, as I’ve done a couple of times, provokes a reaction that’s both funny and illuminating. Asked to read Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition, the more vociferous students invariably express their revulsion, while the more reflective ones voice their frustration that, although the ideas might be compelling, the prose…
on “J. G. Ballard’s Brilliant, “Not Good” Writing” ↗…there are novelists whose prose does legitimately mirror themes of alienation or paranoia (Pynchon and DeLillo come to mind) and I don't think Ballard is one of them. As an aside, I've tried to read Crash at least three times now but the increasingly unbearable sex scenes keep driving me away. Not that I'm scandalized (if anything, I wish I were!)—they're just such a slog to get through. If I have to read…
on “J. G. Ballard’s Brilliant, “Not Good” Writing” ↗I thought I was broad-minded enough to read Crash - I wasn't. I did enjoy other Ballard books.
on “The Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballard” ↗Ballard was primarily an SF author though. His autobiographical Empire of the Sun was an exception as was, arguably Crash. But really, although his later writing got away from the world destroying sub-genre, there were at least science fictional elements throughout.
on “Dark Futures: What happens when literary novelists experiment with Sci-Fi” ↗…the point of being nervous with ‘*’ in the terminal, and generally checking everything twice. (And also have some kind of mild horror-high from corporate snafu stories, weirdly reminiscent of Ballard's ‘Crash’). So: I never feed the data straight from the gathering script into the modifying script, at least not in the first runs. Instead, I dump the whole list of items into a file, count them in there, gawk…
on “I Accidentally Deleted 7TB of Videos Before Going to Production” ↗…think that with this YouTube are slowly taking a shotgun and shooting right up their nose from both barrels. And I lately come to enjoy some nice corporate mess in slo-mo, in the spirit of J.G. Ballard's ‘Crash’. YouTube are a monopoly on public web tv. That needs to change, and YouTube are the ones who are gonna bring on that change.
on “Fran Blanche: This Is Not Legal” ↗