This disturbing novel is often classified as science fiction, though at first glance the label may seem unjustified. The most advanced technologies described in this book are cars and airplanes—and very conventional ones at that. Unlike other Ballard books, such as The Crystal World or The Drowned World , with their apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios, Crash describes a world that apparently is just like our own.
Well, on second thought, maybe not. The technology in Crash may be familiar, but the people can hardly be from this planet. At the opening of the book, the narrator (named Ballard in the novel) describes his recently deceased friend Vaughan, who had a bizarre erotic obsession with car crashes, automobile injuries and motorway mishaps of the most violent sort. This might be plausible, but when we find that the narrator Ballard is also fixated on the sexual potential of car crashes, the reader is doubtful that there are two such sickos in the same town. But then we are introduced to Ballard’s girlfriend Catherine, who also finds auto collisions to be an oh-so-heavy-metal aphrodisiac. And don't let me forget to mention Ballard’s sometime mistress Helen Remington (they met when he killed her husband in a traffic accident) who also gets aroused by—yes, you guessed it—car crashes.
No, these are not believable characters. I have spent a lot of time driving on the roads over the years, and I can attest that you are more likely to find a hobbit, a Hogwarts alum, and two Dune sandworms in the car next to you, than this unlikely foursome. By sheer Darwinian logic, people who need to slam their vehicle into a bus in order to get aroused do not propagate. Heck, they're lucky to live beyond the expiration date on their DMV learner's permit.
These odd characters and their strange inter-relationships are what give Crash the aura of a futuristic book. And their envisioned Armageddon—or “Carmageddon,” as Ballard prefers to describe it— may be as creepy as an attack by Triffids or a virus from outer space, but it is the people themselves, and not their technology, who make us uneasy. The characters here represent something new in fiction; the nihilism of, say, Bazarov in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons looks like Mister Rogers in comfy slippers by comparison.
But the technology is the focus of the writing, and no author has ever lavished more sensually-charged adjectives on the various parts that make up a typical car. The words of devotion that Petrarch aimed at Laura, Dante at Beatrice, are here targeted at steering columns, toggle switches and radiator grilles. Much of this prose is unsettling, even sociopathic. Then again, some of it is quite lovely. No matter what your objections might be to the values espoused by this novel—and if you have no objections, don’t expect to date my daughter—you will be forced to admire the sheer sweep and daring of the writing. Of course, you will probably also get nauseous from time to time before you have reached the grand finale of this paean to a crash test dummy philosophy of life.
Here is a taste: The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse . . . . Or how about this: The car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event. And how about a nice aphorism to append to your emails: They bury the dead so quickly. They should leave them lying around for months. No, these are not isolated passages taken out of context (trust me, the context only makes it worse), but rather typical extracts from a very atypical novel.
If you like edgy, this is definitely edgy. Even so, a sociopath is a sociopath, no matter how well he writes. And the character named Ballard who narrates this story is sick in the head, and needs some treatment. I won’t pass judgment on that other fellow named Ballard who wrote Crash . Maybe he is just offering us an oblique critique of contemporary mores. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he had a screw or two loose too.