Crash
by J.G. Ballard, Zadie Smith
Featuring an introduction by Zadie Smith; "Jim's Desk" and introductory notes by Chris Beckett
The short stories "Crash," "Tolerances of the Human Face," and "Mae West's Reduction Mammoplasty" by J. G. Ballard
Treatments and letters about the BBC2 Review short film about J. G. Ballard titled "Crash!" that aired in February 1971
Introduction to the French edition of Crash
An excerpt of an interview with Will Self and J. G. Ballard from 1994 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 crasha 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.
Hardcover
English
Brand New
Author Biography
J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novel Crash was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography Miracles of Life was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, Extreme Metaphors, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009. Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as a collection of essays, Changing My Mind.
Review
"In Ballard the dystopia is not hidden under anything. Nor is it (as with so many fictional dystopias) a vision of the future. It is not the subtext. It is the text...."
Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books "A work of very powerful originality. Ballard is among our finest writers of fiction."
Anthony Burgess "Crash sensationally and scintillatingly succeeds."
Martin Amis "The last great English avatar of the avant-garde."
Will Self
Review Quote
"In Ballard the dystopia is not hidden under anything. Nor is it (as with so many fictional dystopias) a vision of the future. It is not the subtext. It is the text...." Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books "A work of very powerful originality. Ballard is among our finest writers of fiction." Anthony Burgess " Crash sensationally and scintillatingly succeeds." Martin Amis "The last great English avatar of the avant-garde." Will Self
Description for Sales People
Introduction by Zadie Smith Possible foreword by David Lynch or a similar caliber Ballard fan Second in the Rare Bird Deluxe Editions series Deluxe hardcover with marginalia, annotations, and commentary by editors, fans, and reviewers of Ballard Launch party with notable authors in Los Angeles and New York
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