The Definitive Cult, Postmodern Novel―Reissued with a New Introduction from Zadie Smith
When J. G. Ballard, our narrator, smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of autoerotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash―a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant, and iconic celebrity.
First published in 1973, Crash remains one of the most shocking novels of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.
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J. G. Ballard influenced a remarkable cross-disciplinary constellation, including writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Michel Houellebecq, Will Self, Hari Kunzru, Jeff Noon, Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville; filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg, David Cronenberg, "Civil War" director Alex Garland, Ben Wheatley and Chris Petit; visual artists and musicians including David Bowie, Brian Eno, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, Gary Numan, Plastikman, Charlie XCX and Burial; architects and urban theorists such as Rem Koolhaas, Lebbeus Woods and Reyner Banham; and philosophers/cultural theorists like Mark Fisher, Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio, all drawn to his fusion of media saturation, psychological extremity, consumer modernity, technological eroticism and the eerie unreality of late-20th-century life. The word "Ballardian" can be found in many dictionaries, three of his novels have been adapted into films, and one of his short stories inspired the theme for the 2024 Met Gala.
