BALLARD, J.G. Crash. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1973.
8vo. Original publisher's black cloth spine lettered in silver with grey paper-covered boards, top-edge stained maroon; illustrated unclipped dust jacket designed by Lawrence Ratzkin, pp. [vi], 224; Small triangular stain to front pastedown and top edge of fornt panel of dust jacket has a clsuter of mild markings, otherwise near fine.
First US edition.
A highly controversial and cult work, exploring the experiences of a group of car-crash fetishists who become sexually aroused by staging and participating in lethal car accidents, inspired by the famous crashes of celebrities. Unsurprisingly, opinion was highly divided upon publication, with the New York Times writing "hands-down, the most repulsive book I've yet to come across" and another reviewer returning the verdict "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!". Anthony Burgess supported Ballard's graphic transgressions as such; "Ballard has issued a series of bulletins on the modern world of almost unerring prescience. Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates".
Ballard defended his work and its prophetic appeal by writing: "Throughout Crash I have used the car not only as a sexual image, but as a total metaphor for man's life in today's society. As such the novel has a political role quite apart from its sexual content, but I would still like to think that Crash is the first pornographic novel based on technology. In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other in the most urgent and ruthless way. 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."
Crash is one of the most shocking and controversial novels of the 20th century and was made into a scandalous film by David Cronenberg.
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