BALLARD, J.G. Crash. London: Jonathan Cape.`1973.
8vo. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's device to foot, dust jacket with wrap-around image designed by Bill Botten; pp. [vi], 7-224; spine tips lightly pushed; a very good copy in very good dust jacket, a touch sunned to spine, lightly creased to edges and along folds; discreet restoration to spine tips and corners.
First edition.
A controversial work exploring the experiences of a group of car-crash fetishists, sexually aroused by staging and participating in car accidents. Unsurprisingly, opinion was highly divided upon publication, the New York Times reviewer declaring the novel "hands-down, the most repulsive book I've yet to come across" and another returning the verdict "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!".
Ballard wrote of the work: "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."
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