After narrator James Ballard is injured in a car crash near London Airport, he develops symphorophilia--sexual attraction to accidents--and joins a cult of like-minded masochists seeking pleasure in deliberate freeway destruction. Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973) is as insane as it sounds, likewise violent and sexually graphic. Prior to its publication, one submission-sifter declared: "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!" Said reader ought to be forgiven, if ignored.
As central as fictionalized Ballard himself is one Robert Vaughan, a "former TV-scientist" whose own brush with a four-wheeled fatality has left him determined to create the perfect sex-death "accident." Dr. Vaughan brings Ballard and Ballard's wife under his scarred wing, using them and other varieties of cripple to examine the human mind and body--especially how they interact with metal at high speed. When this "nightmare angel of the expressways" settles on a terminal obsession--the film star Elizabeth Taylor and her slaying via vehicle---Ballard may be too far along to step off the ride, even if he wanted to. In 1996, David Cronenberg adapted Crash into a film staring James Spader. In 2017, Picador published Crash with a new introduction by Zadie Smith ($17, 9781250171511). --Tobias Mutter
