The publisher who famously suggested after reading Crash that Ballard was, to paraphrase, mentally unhinged, was probably not that far wide of the mark. This book was clearly not written by a well man, and Ballard later admitted much the same, this strange novel being part of his therapy to exsorcise the pain of losing his wife so young. An attempt to debase humanity, to relegate nature and raise the machines.
In Crash, cars are organic and humans are mechanic. Sex is routine, loveless. The car crash is lustful, orgasmic. The novel is written in the detached, cold clinical prose that became Ballard's trademark, and the result is like reading the world's most peculiar car owners manual.
But despite the sheer oddity of this book, Crash is a very hard book to finish, let alone enjoy. The endless amount of extreme sex and violence soon becomes a bore, and the characters are, typically for Ballard, no more than cyphers used to act out his demented nightmare.
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