Crash (edit title)

• Rated 2 stars

“auto erotic car porn. i blame devesh for this one. it took me about 6-9 months to finish.”

• Rated 2 stars

“Disturbing and sexually explicit made for a pretty repellent read. Again, I think his point could have been made without being yucky.”

• Rated 5 stars

“close to a masterpiece :)”

• Rated 5 stars

“I find it fascinating...by my favorite adult fiction writer who sadly passed away this 2009 : (”

• Rated 4 stars

“If the Marquis de Sade had somehow been a car enthusiast he might have produced "Crash," J. G. Ballard's ode to the automobile accident as sexual object. Ballard certainly is creative, although some would more likely label him perverse. "Crash" seems to anticipate the outrageousness of Chuck Palahniuk and likewise feels a bit like some of the writings of William Burroughs. One wonders what Elizabeth Taylor made of the whole thing. This is without question a memorable novel. ”

• Rated 4 stars

“ I'm at a loss to really say why this appealed to me so when I've found Ballard's work to be difficult and this is hardly an easy read. The book creeped me out sometimes but it was so detached in it's language and lyrical in it's style that the most horrible things seemed on some level to be beautiful.

I like the movie better, it added a little bit of humor but this is a pretty bold experiment of a novel. It reminds me of Burrough's at his absolute peak.”

• Rated 2 stars

“favors cautionary hyperbole in addressing obsession, keeping the reader from relating.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Tedium has a new definition in my books. Or rather, in one book. If anybody should ever wish to be anesthetized to pornography, they could proabably do no better than read Ballard's Crash. Doubtless an example of a great writer accutely manipulating his prose, the resultant effect is far from pyrotechnic. Monotony seems the name of the game in this book about shagging and car crashes. Any ulterior attempt to draw attention to the shortcomings of the post-modern world in which we live, is desperately drowned in this monochrome work.”

• Rated 2 stars

“Repetitive, taboo for the sake of being taboo, overly-long. I really wanted to read this as a darkly-poetic statement about the direction in which our technology is taking us and/or alienation and the desire for connection (physical or otherwise), but was just too personally alienated (perhaps intentionally?) by all the previously-mentioned issues to do so. I can appreciate the power of creating characters the reader doesn't entirely relate to, whether for the purpose of exploring a taboo or some sort of disjuncture or any other desired intellectual terrain, but the author's repetition and lack of major progression made it hard to even appreciate this book as an intellectual exercise. I had to push myself to complete it.

I gave it two stars because of Ballard's use of language (he creates some powerfully repugnant analogies/allegories) and exploration of ideas. However, intellectual exercise, alone, does not a successful novel make for this reader.”