Fair.

Not sure I’d recommend Crash for excitement, but fair enough.

Thank you for your contribution. Next time I start a topic about a book you haven’t read, be sure to join in. :grin:

But I'm guessing on hearsay, because the whole horror/porn/thriller/gangster/ police /serial-killer/supernatural scene already bores me, so I'm not really concerned to find out either way. — unenlightened

If the horror/porn/thriller/gangster/ police /serial-killer/supernatural scene bores you, allow me to recommend…Crash.

So crazy shit becomes boring when normalised. Maybe the world needed to be appraised of this. Like how porn in general becomes ever more explicit, and ever more extreme, as the breaking of each taboo becomes normalised. Eventually, megadeath, or the vaginal evisceration of a woman is just as dull as another wank. I remember the good old days when playing doctors and nurses was excitingly transgressive.

It's not an Earth shattering insight: when you're tired of Crash, you're tired of death. That's about how good it can possibly be, I think: a demonstration of the banality of evil. — unenlightened

Internally, Crash normalizes some crazy shit, but the result is to de-normalize what we take to be unremarkable in the real world: the inhuman landscapes of flyovers, car parks, and airport hotels; selfish passionless sex; the love affair with cars; a horrific accident. Ballard wrote about the “death of affect”, referring to the replacement of feeling with mere sensation:

When I wrote about the death of affect in The Atrocity Exhibition in the late ’60s, I was writing against a background of a sensation-hungry media landscape that seized on all the violent imagery emerging from Vietnam, from the Kennedy assassination, from civil wars in Africa—all that atrocity footage that gave The Atrocity Exhibition its name. I was writing about the way in which sensation had usurped the place previously occupied by some kind of sympathetic engagement with the subject. I mean, one saw blowups of the Kennedy motorcade used as backdrops in fashion magazines. Images that should have elicited pity and concern were drained of any kind of human response, in the way that Warhol demonstrated. His art really was dedicated to just that. I don’t think it is quite so blatant nowadays. It is now incorporated into the way we see the world. In the ’60s one would see fashion models flouncing around in front of a backdrop of the Kennedy assassination, or a napalm explosion. You’d think, “My God, what are they doing?” Now, of course, thirty years later, you don’t even notice it.

I think a large part of the furor created here by Crash has been the desperate response of people who’ve seen a number of appalling atrocities on British television—like the massacre of sixteen five-year-olds in Scotland last March—and are looking for an explanation. You know, something must be behind this appalling event, and people think maybe there’s something wrong with the media world itself. — Ballard interview in Artforum magazine

Appraising the world of this is more than just about the banality of evil, I think. It’s a particular kind of banality.

But I want to pull back from the cautionary tale angle somewhat. Crash is an artistic reflection or exaggeration of reality that does not have a clear message, or one that is easy to explicate, but does that mean it’s just an indulgence of depravity?

Reminds me of the Atrocity Exhibition. I think these two works are probably deeply related on a conceptual level. Might have to take a lok again. — Apustimelogist

Forgot to reply to this. Although I haven’t read it, I’ve heard it said that Crash is indeed a development of some of the ideas in that book.

One other thing that lingers, now I'm remembering the impact of 'Crash' on me...The developed world really does fetishize the car in a most peculiar way, and this is very rarely remarked upon. People rationally agree that we've got to cut back on oil use, and yet buy bigger energy-guzzling cars, can only imagine a net zero future with loads of cars, vote for policies that allow cars more rights than pedestrian people. The person with the flag walking in front of a car to keep its speed down in 1900 would have saved thousands of lives: why do we laugh at such an image? The victory of car-drivers over pedestrians for rights over the city streets that gave rise to the term 'jaywalkers' 100 years ago wasn't an inevitable historical victory. The advertisements I see whenever I go to a cinema seem to be a sensual and sometimes quasi-erotic hymn to the car, and few other than Ballard have ever taken up this notion and run with it. I think future eras will look back on this phase of humanity's relationship with cars and wonder at how perverse we were. to so over-value the car, an asset the salaryman/working woman can enjoy and love and work dutifully for and become addicted to. — mcdoodle

Totally agree. In fact, I think jaywalking was pretty much an invention of the car industry. They campaigned hard to entrench the idea that streets are primarily for cars. The land of the free, where you can get arrested for crossing the road.

I live in a city clogged with traffic. When I say to a local person that in the future people will look back on this period in disbelief, they look at me like I’m crazy.

So I’m definitely supportive of Ballard’s effort of outrageous defamiliarization, which shines a new light on the world we live in.

Thanks for the reply, and some nice insights! To be honest I deeply respect the idea of someone who is uncompromising to put their stamp on a goal or vision they want to communicate and explore. Those kind of things really are what stick with me in stories or films. Even if a film or story isn't particularly exciting or enjoyable, if I perceive of it as projecting some kind of well-built underlying concept or vision, I often find myelf returning to it again and again, at least in thought, over more enjoyable alternatives. Sometimes though it takes time for those things to click. There have definitely been examples, in particular of films, where my first viewings I didn't find good at all, but once I can construct a picture I find interesting, whatever I found boring or uninteresting or disagreeable with it doesn't really matter anymore, or even accentuates the new way I am viewing it. — Apustimelogist

I know what you mean, although I’m struggling to think of a film I disliked that I later regarded highly. Maybe Eyes Wide Shut, but I’m still at the dislike stage on that one :grin:

The wikipedia synopsis of Unlimited Dream Company sounds quite interesting actually. — Apustimelogist

Though I did find it a bit irritating, it’s interesting and fun at times. I can imagine myself reading it again. It’s unusual for Ballard in that it feels upbeat and life-affirming—in a psychotic and apocalyptic way.

I was very taken with 'Crash', which I read about thirty years ago. In a way I felt prepared for how inexorable it is. From earlier novels I remembered 'The wind from nowhere', which I'd read before 'Crash', when a cyclonic wind springs up, and blows, and blows, and when any other writer would maybe have it ease up, the wind and the terrors it unleashes are relentless. Perhaps it was that familiarity with how Ballard's mind seemed to work that makes me feel I wasn't as affected as you were by 'Crash': I knew he would take one giant premise, and be inexorable, relentless. 'High rise' is a later, to me failed, version of the same obsessive approach. Maybe I was ready to keep my distance. — mcdoodle

That makes sense. Whereas I was dismayed by the relentless elaboration of a single idea, you were expecting it. It was the first of his novels I've read, after all.

In longer retrospect, 'Empire of the sun' was later an eye-opener to Ballard's imagination, a semi-autobiographical novel of a boy lost in the horrors of the Second World War in 'the far East', forced to confront terrible things before he was old enough to have developed a moral compass. — mcdoodle

I haven't read it. It hadn't occurred to me that it would be possible to trace the disturbing surrealism of his other work back to his real experiences, since I seem to remember him saying that life in the internment camp wasn't all that bad, as if he was trying to downplay the attempts at psychologizing him. But that might have been my misinterpretation.

Last thought: I felt as you did about 'Crash', about the Pinturas Negras, the 'Black Paintings' of Goya when I saw them in Madrid. They are images that still sometimes haunt me. I can see 'Saturn devouring his son' or 'Two old men eating soup' clearly now, without having to look them up, and my gorge rises. They are ghastly, and I'm deeply glad I saw them. — mcdoodle

Yes indeed. I saw them in Madrid as well, and felt something similar. It's not fun to spend a lot of time with those paintings. Aside from Saturn, the two that stay with me are the fight with clubs, which is brutal, and the dog.

Anyway, thanks. It's great to get some insight from someone familiar with Ballard's work.

To add to the reply I posted above…

What might be the case is that in his novels, he is free to let his imagination run wild. That sounds trite, but I think it’s an important fact about Ballard that he is not actually interested in the world except insofar as it shapes the unconscious; what he really likes to do is dredge up dreams and fantasies and develop them in surreality, with little concern to refer back to reality.

So in the novels, we get long descriptions of the surreal, presented—in what seems like a formality or concession—as if they were real. And just like the description of someone else’s dream can be boring, so can Ballard’s imaginings. It is not that the ideas are unengaging, rather that the exhaustive development and description of those ideas wears me down.

This isn’t a problem in the short stories, where the ideas have to take centre stage.

To me an excellent work is engaging — L'éléphant

To me, there wouldn't be a clash of antagonistic judgments if I find a piece of work engaging — L'éléphant

Many people find the book engaging, and not only writers and critics. It’s quite popular and also highly regarded.

What you’re pointing out is that my opinion seems contradictory, and I agree: this is the conundrum.

Do you think it needed to be unenjoyable to be the art it is, in your view? — Apustimelogist

Good question. It needed to be unenjoyable (to me) to be what it was. What it was was unenjoyable in its bones. I don’t think it would have been the same work of fiction, with the same power to haunt me, had Ballard removed, for example, the endless description of the mergings and juxtapositions of mutilated bodies and broken car parts in purely aesthetic terms, repeating ad nauseum words like “stylized,” “formalized,” “junction,” and of course, “engine coolant.”

And I don’t think it would have made much difference to my enjoyment had he just done a bit of light revision to find some more varied vocabulary.

So I suppose the answer is yes. But that’s not to say that it was the merely the unenjoyableness itself that caused me to think it was a substantial work of art.

I do, however, own a collection of Ballard's short stories and find that he is a great short story writer, both very enjoyable as well as insightful and intelligent. So I wonder if you think Crash needs to be unenjoyable to be its art. — Apustimelogist

I recently read his collection The Terminal Beach and found it very enjoyable, but found the novel The Unlimited Dream Company rather irritating and not anywhere near as powerful as Crash. So yeah, in terms of reading enjoyment his short stories seem better.

I haven’t read The Atrocity Exhibition but probably will one day. The next one of his books for me will likely be Vermilion Sands, which I think is a short story collection.

David Cronenburg, who adapted it into a film, had a similar experience to me. He couldn’t finish it the first time he read it, and even after he’d finally gone back and read the whole thing, he didn’t like it. But it stayed with him, and he ultimately felt he had to do something about it (turn it into a film, in his case)—the question of like or dislike was irrelevant.

Something like that. But in my case at least, the dislike was not so much about the distasteful subject matter (and I seriously doubt that was the problem for Cronenburg tbh), but about the tedious pretentiousness, repetitiveness, and so on. Which makes it all the more puzzling that I’m now saying it’s an important work of literature. I think I’ve just changed my mind upon realising how powerful an effect it had on me.

Right, so good for you but unenjoyable. Like plain broccoli.

Again I think it’s best to think of artworks in terms of parts. Maybe most of it is boring, but certain parts stand out or stick with you. Certain scenes in a movie, certain chapters in a book, certain melodies in music, whatever.

Perhaps that’s a way to square this circle. — Mikie

I tend to think that if only a few bits of a book or film are great, while the rest of it isn’t great, then the thing has failed. On the other hand I agree that there will always be bits that stick with you more than other bits. I don’t think this gets to the problem with Crash, which is utterly consistent. Ballard doesn’t lose control for a second, except perhaps for the endless repetition of words like “stylized” and “junction”, which he may not have noticed himself doing.

Reminds me of some portions of Dhalgren sans the violence — Manuel

I expect to be reading that soon, since I’ve been getting into Delany recently.

But then today I thought of Videodrome. This is the Cronenberg flick I was thinking of when saying he crosses the lines at times. The movie sits in a very uncomfortable place for me because there are depictions of what I'd call snuff (except that we know we aren't watching real snuff) and so if you think about it at all you're like "this just is snuff" and it's disgusting. But then there are scenes through the movie which bend around the idea of snuff. It's a weird blend of phantasmagoria and this blunt reality of the possibility in human desire. — Moliere

I always say I like Cronenburg but I haven’t even seen Videodrome, by most accounts one of his most important and original films. What you say makes me want to see it. Not that I’m into snuff movies, you understand.

Deadringers evokes similar feelings in me, but then I don't have a cognitive dislike of what's going on so it's not as bad, it's merely "oogie" to me but not a rational opposition... maybe this feeling is what you're talking about? — Moliere

Not sure. I do like Dead Ringers though.

Go for it.

Well I say go for it, but you already know I have mixed feelings about it.

Following is a representative sample to help you make the decision. It’s one of the more imaginative and lyrical passages, dispensing with the technical language in favour of a more fanciful register. I can easily imagine that some people would find it fascinating, while others would roll their eyes.

Two firemen cut the door from its hinges. Dropping it into the road, they peered down at me like the assistants of a gored bullfighter. Even their smallest movements seemed to be formalized, hands reaching towards me in a series of coded gestures. If one of them had unbuttoned his coarse serge trousers to reveal his genitalia, and pressed his penis into the bloody crotch of my armpit, even this bizarre act would have been acceptable in terms of the stylization of violence and rescue. I waited for someone to reassure me as I sat there, dressed in another man's blood while the urine of his young widow formed rainbows around my rescuers' feet. By this same nightmare logic the firemen racing towards the burning wrecks of crashed airliners might trace obscene or humorous slogans on the scalding concrete with their carbon dioxide sprays, executioners could dress their victims in grotesque costumes. In return, the victims would stylize the entrances to their deaths with ironic gestures, solemnly kissing their executioners' gun-butts, desecrating imaginary flags. Surgeons would cut themselves carelessly before making their first incisions, wives casually murmur the names of their lovers at the moment of their husbands' orgasms, the whore mouthing her customer's penis might without offence bite a small circle of tissue from the upper curvature of his glans. That same painful bite which I once received from a tired prostitute irritated by my hesitant erection reminds me of the stylized gestures of ambulance attendants and filling station personnel, each with their repertory of private movements.

Yet what would be the point of even speaking about it if doing so would only produce boredom? Strange. — Manuel

That’s the thing: nobody is supposed to do this. It’s taken for granted that in telling a story about boredom, you shouldn’t be boring. But Crash is boring while telling a story that is not boring—there’s a lot of crazy shit happening.

Essential to the novel is that it is deadpan, clinical, amoral, and emotionless. One might say I’ve just mistaken this very intentional style for boringness.

What makes this difficult to think through is I can almost always find something I enjoy in a work of art, but when I don't I also just move on. There can be a morbid curiosity that pushes me on, but that isn't the frustration you're describing. What you describe is a work of art that more or less invokes aesthetic analogues to pain which you suffer through, dislike, and then come to appreciate.

With literature I'm struggling, though I can think of some examples from philosophy that are a lot like that -- start out frustrating and boring but then, upon pushing through, they become something better -- at the very least, worthwhile to have read. (and it's a curious experience because it's hard to describe to someone why you'd subject yourself to pain for the good of appreciating it, when usually people like creative works not in this sense but because it appeals rather than because it frustrates) — Moliere

Yes, I think that’s a good analogy: it is a bit like the experience of reading profound but badly written or abstruse philosophy (which is not to say that Crash is badly written, since this is just an analogy).

And maybe it’s more than just an analogy. I mentioned before that Crash is some kind of conceptual fiction. In the same way as visual conceptual art is a way of doing philosophy (recalling Deleuze’s characterization of philosophy as the creation of concepts), conceptual fiction is a literary exploration of concepts free of the conventional demands of fiction. You can maybe just boil it down to: you don’t have to like it, it doesn’t have to be beautiful, and it doesn’t have to be executed with traditional skill—it’s just meant to make you think.

And that’s fair enough. Crash then is something along the lines of a bunch of bananas filled with piss, a can of the artist’s shit, or a sheep cut in half.

Another possibility is that I did actually enjoy it in some way, despite how tedious and boring I often found it. The whole premise of the book is crazy, but presented totally deadpan—I mean, that’s just inherently intriguing to me. So maybe I’ve been basically fascinated with it the whole time.

Which means the enjoyment angle is pretty much beside the point. I don’t know where that leaves this discussion :grin:

Actually, the first 240 pages of Gravity's Rainbow were close to being unreadable. One almost has no clue what is going on. But once it takes off, it's nuts. — Manuel

Damn, for some reason I thought it was the first 50, and after that plain sailing. Well, I’ll get around to it eventually, but it still feels too soon after completing the mammoth Against the Day.

The topic of boredom itself is hard to speak about in a profound manner. I think David Foster Wallace's last book, The Pale King, tried to speak about boredom - working in a tax office - while attempting not to be too boring. He never finished the book, due to his suicide. — Manuel

I think one can make boring experiences interesting in the telling, submitting them to the tools of the storyteller. Boredom can be fascinating and funny, in retrospect. Maybe another way that boredom isn’t boring is when the boredomee is not him/herself boring; like Proust, they may have a rich inner life that means that even when they’re bored they’re never boring, if we get inside their mind.

What I’ve been doing in this thread is discussing a boring experience in a quite interesting way. It’s actually pretty easy, and everyone does it, e.g., ranting wittily about how boring a movie was.

Edit: na man, I can feel I'm not making any interesting comments. May try again later — Manuel

Don’t worry, you’re not being boring. So far I haven’t really framed the debate properly to give it clarity (see my struggles to define enjoyment), so we’re all just scrabbling around in the dark.

Then I'd suggest that you weren't actually bored, maybe you were reading it in a disinterested manner. But boredom to me, carries negative connotations that if allowed to continue for too long, is quite exhausting and frustrating. — Manuel

I was definitely bored, exhausted and frustrated. I abandoned it a couple of times but went back to it because I wanted to have read it, to know about Ballard’s flavour of avant-garde, to find out what he was doing.

But if it was shocking, how could it have been boring? I think because the shock kind of wears off in the first few chapters, after which it’s tedious repetition.

Thinking about the book afterwards—which I’m obviously still doing—wasn’t boring, but the experience of reading it really was, despite moments of interest and a certain appreciation of the writing. This is why I said at the time that it’s a conceptual piece more suited to analysis than to artistic appreciation.

200 plus goddam pages.

I should point out again that I’ve changed my view, and consider those things that seemed bad at the time as contributing to its effectiveness.

I remember watching all three films in the 'hostel' series. Have you watched them? I found them quite stomach-churning — universeness

No, I would not watch something like that. I am a total wuss when it comes to horror, although oddly enough I do like a lot of horror films, up to a point.

I’ll respond to a couple of things and might come back to the rest later.

In your opinion, does a novel like Crash, disturb you more, when you imagine yourself as a victim or as a perpetrator of such acts? — universeness

As a reader of Crash you’re a voyeur at most. It’s not involving and the characters are not relatable. So the idea of putting yourself in their shoes doesn’t occur to you. This was by design. And anyway, a lot of the most shocking stuff in the book is consensual, so it’s not so much about perpetrators and victims, but more about people using each other.

Really you’re asking a more general question unrelated to the book: if I’m more disturbed by the idea of being a perpetrator of (fictional or otherwise) violence, or the victim. I suppose I’d have to say the perpetrator. Being the victim is just something horrific you’d want to avoid, but the thought of being the perpetrator makes me wonder if there are circumstances that could actually make me do it, which is more unsettling.

Another question I would like to ask you is, do such novels as 'crash,' make you crave more, for a society where the chances of such depicted human behavior happening to you, or because of you, is reduced to as near zero as we can make it? — universeness

I should point out that what is depicted in the book does not happen in real life. It’s metaphorical. But I get your point. As it happens, the novel did make me explore critical theory with questions in mind such as “how did things go wrong?”

When you muse on notions such as human depravity as depicted by human authors in dystopian novels? Do you ever get flashes in your mind of scenes from David Attenborough or other nature series you may have watched in the past? — universeness

Not really, but decades later I do still clearly remember a scene from one of those documentaries of a wildebeest being eaten alive by a pack of hyenas, starting from the back legs and arse and progressing along the body.

I wonder if such novels disturb many of us, because they remind us of the 'depraved' ways our ancestors had to be to survive, under jungle rules.
Instinct/survival imperative versus the human goal of 'civilised behavior.'
Many humans have chosen depravity as a way to win 'jungle-style' competition.
Is that what really disturbs any human mind that considers itself civilised? — universeness

Depravity under jungle rules is nothing compared to the depravity of American slavery and the Nazi death camps, so no to that. On the other hand, there is a special—and also fascinating and stimulating—horror for me in folk horror films like the Wicker Man, and religious horror like the Exorcist. When I first watched the Wicker Man I didn’t know anything about it, and I sympathised with the pagan islanders whose behaviour was so shocking to Edward Woodward’s austere Wee Free Christian fundamentalist—until their barbarity became apparent. So there’s something to be said for your idea: what is disturbing in these films is, maybe, the idea of ancient unalloyed evil that hasn’t gone away.

What's interesting to me is that it's not too frequent - in my experience. That something one has read which one find boring, ends up having much impact. It can happen, and when it does, it's just so very strange. — Manuel

I’m struggling to come up with any example whatever of something I’ve watched or read that I found utterly boring that also stuck with me in some way. I feel that’s almost contradictory. Maybe certain parts of a book or a film that is otherwise a bore will stay with me, or get me to question things, etc— but I’d say those are just that: interesting parts of a generally boring work. — Mikie

That’s the puzzle.

One possibility that occurred to me is just that because I don’t usually read transgressive fiction, Crash shocked me so much that I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. If that’s what has happened, maybe it means that anything equally shocking would have had the same effect, even gratuitous trash.

But I don’t think so. It’s the way that Crash was shocking that had the effect, a way that distinguishes it as more than gratuitous trash.

I watched Castle Freak a few months ago [EDIT: the 1995 version]. Like the more famous Re-Animator, it’s a Lovecraftian B movie horror film directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs. I thought it was well-made and very enjoyable (a very underrated horror, I reckon), but there’s one particular totally gratuitous and distgustingly violent scene that I was not prepared for, and it’s stuck in my mind in the way @L'éléphant describes:

When I'm repulsed at something, it lingers in my mind […] like a grime that needs to be cleansed — L'éléphant

(Nice metaphor)

The thing is, Crash doesn’t feel like that. Its effect feels deeper, more intellectual and more unsettling.

I’ll jump in here just to take it a step further: I didn’t even know who JG Ballard was, and had to Wikipedia him. There, I said it. — Mikie

I’m not trying to shame you for your ignorance but it’s worth pointing out that at least three of his books have been adapted into films, one by Steven Spielberg, and that the word Ballardian has made it into a few dictionaries.

But I’ve enjoyed this thread nonetheless. Challenges some beliefs I’ve had for probably too long about “art” and “entertainment.” I confess it’s something like the gourmet meal vs. McDonalds view that Jamal mentions (I’m paraphrasing), so it’s worth re-examining. — Mikie

But notice that my metaphor (which I disagreed with) was pizza vs. turnip soup. The latter is good for you, but hardly a gourmet meal. I may say more about that later.

I didn't read the book, but the OP is fulfilling to read. Again, what an insight! — L'éléphant

Thank you.

If I had read the book, I would use the word "misrepresentation". Probably. Maybe now he wants to be legit, so now he calls it a cautionary tale. — L'éléphant

I think that’s a bit unfair. As I said, I think his interpretation was a good one, and he had been legit already for a long time, a doyen of English literature, so he had nothing to prove.

I just thought of a better way of putting things, which bypasses the confusions around what counts as enjoyable (or entertaining): what I’m talking about is the experience of a book or film etc. that would lead you to say, just after you’ve finished it, that it was a good experience. Many dark, harrowing and sad works would fit.

But Crash was not a good experience, and Salo was not a good experience for you. And yet later on, in my case Crash showed its power by making me think about stuff.

I loved The Shining when I first saw it as a horror movie that actually evoked fear in me. But when you start to put together how accurate the portrayal is, and how domestic violence continues on, it really takes out the enjoyment aspect. — Moliere

That’s exactly what happened with me. As I got older the domestic violence really began to stand out, whereas before it was all about the mystery of the haunted hotel.

Were you aware that Cronenberg made a film adaptation of the book? I wasn't aware that it even was a book, but I knew of the movie because I like Cronenberg (though I didn't see it, so I can't say how that particular movie is. Some Cronenberg crosses the line for me, and some doesn't) — Moliere

Yes, I saw the film first, many years ago. I though it was great. Somehow less disturbing than the book, although looking back now I can see it was an excellent adaptation. The cold, clinical detachment is spot-on.

I know of Salo, but I haven’t seen it, and I know enough about it to avoid it. That said, it sounds similar to Crash in that it’s supposed to have a political or social message. It’s anti-fascist, they say.

I'm wondering if there are other forms of unenjoyable art than these sort of grotesque depictions. There's something to be said for challenging work which goes over dark themes -- it's not exactly fun, but part of what makes art art is that it's in some sense appealing.

I'd put forward Eraserhead as a possible contender there. — Moliere

There are many works that deal with dark stuff which I would say are enjoyable. I don’t mean fun, exactly, but I think “enjoyable” can stretch to cover compelling, fascinating, terrifying, heartbreaking , etc.

I wouldn’t personally put Eraserhead in the class of works that are unenjoyable but also good art, for the simple reason that I find it enjoyable.

So I’m still having trouble thinking of anything else to put in that class alongside Crash.

I’ve just thought of one: Kubrick’s The Shining. Every time I watch it I wish I hadn’t, because it’s such a dark vision of never-ending abusive violence, cold and uncompromising and more disturbing than most horror movies, at least to me (even though they escape in the end). On the other hand, it definitely is entertaining so maybe it’s enjoyable after all. Yeah, not sure.

If you want to restrict this thread, to discussion on the works of Ballard and similar works Jamal, then I will post no more on this particular 'branch off.' — universeness

Well, what you’ve said is a pretty interesting side-issue so don’t worry. I may respond later, after I’ve done some thinking.

Have you compared it to Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho? — baker

I read that years ago and yes, I can see the connection, though I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned it. American Psycho didn’t hit me so hard though, not sure why.

All I can say here is that if one has to struggle to understand what one is being cautioned against, the cautionary aspect is not very successful. — unenlightened

I’m not sure about this. I mean sure, it makes a lot of sense, but I think there’s room for cautionary tales that are only vaguely cautionary, that make us uncomfortable with the world.

But I don’t actually think Crash is all that vague as a cautionary tale. In the real world, crashes are exciting and people slow down to have a look; they are in some sense titillated by it. I reckon that’s pretty obvious. So that’s one side of it. The other is the self-centred seeking of sexual gratification and what I called the pornification of relationships. And then there’s the alienation of suburbia. There might be no explicit lecture in the book but you can see what he’s doing in mixing these together with a consistent internal logic.

I’m glad you brought up misanthropy, because it’s made me think. There is something a bit nasty in Ballard, I think. I already compared him unfavourably on that dimension with Nabokov, a writer not known for his lavish compassion. Another author I can mention is Samuel Beckett. His so-called trilogy that begins with Molloy is disturbing, pessimistic, sordid and difficult. And yet you feel there’s a compassionate heart behind it, and even, maybe, a playful sort of love of life. So, far from feeling nasty, it’s a pleasure to read.

That’s a bunch of vague musings.

The novel was like a lightning rod that collected nebulous elements of your psyche and generated a jolt that you became aware of. Dreams can do that too. There's a link between art and dreams, in that both tell truths through fiction. So this novel found a home in your psyche because you needed it, or something like that. — frank

Nicely put, I like it. Yes, it was something like that for sure.

Fair comment. Mind you, that's not to say that writing it wasn't pleasurable — unenlightened

Also a fair comment, but I think what matters is whether it reads like Ballard was wallowing pleasurably in depravity, and I don’t think it does.

But that's enough pontificating from my unassailable position of total ignorance, hopefully others who have read it will have more interesting things to say. — unenlightened

I can’t imagine better objections from someone who hasn’t read it. I’ll mull over your comments.

One thing though: wallowing is pleasurable or comfortable, and reading Crash is definitely not like that, and was very clearly not meant to be.

Lolita, by the way, is not in the same ballpark. It doesn’t attempt to say anything about society or make any moral point. It is a lovingly crafted self-contained exercise in playing with the reader. The subject matter is chosen largely for its significance in the mind of the reader, which he tries to distract the reader from by making Humbert likeable or admirable, or at least impressive. Nabokov was a trickster making beautifully crafted wooden boxes with hidden compartments.

But it’s because of that subject matter that I don’t like it as much his other books, which don’t have that problem. Some of them, unlike probably anything Ballard wrote, are deeply humane (I’m thinking of Pnin and Pale Fire).

Why did you read it? — unenlightened

Intriguement.

Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it traumatized me.

I haven't read it, and do not intend to read it. Ballard was one of my least favourite sf writers, and one reason was a sense of misanthropy and moral nihilism that always seemed to come through his writing. — unenlightened

I see the misanthropy, but—if this isn’t a contradiction—I don’t see the moral nihilism. I mean, he shows moral nihilism precisely because he’s morally concerned or outraged (or merely conservative (which by the way I think he was, politically)).

Is It? What are we being warned against that we are in danger of? Have you found something in society and or in your psyche that you were unaware of before? Or are we being shown the dangers of delight in cautionary tales? — unenlightened

This is what I was trying to understand. It seems to be the dehumanizing effects of technology combined with the pornification of relationships, and the psychopathic nature of the suburban landscape (“psychopathic” here meaning anti-social and dehumanizing). I think he effectively, if vaguely, drew attention to it, by exaggeration and cognitive estrangement, allowing the reader to see society anew, in a roundabout way as it really is.

I find there is more than enough horror and psychopathic perversity around and within. One does well to acknowledge it, even to confess it perhaps, but one does ill to indulge it. I speak from ignorance, of course, but nothing you have said thus far has given me the least reason to think I ought to read it let alone want to. I haven't read Lolita either. — unenlightened

I don’t think reading Crash is to indulge horror and psychopathic perversity. It’s to face up to it. At least, that’s what I’m thinking of as the “official” assessment of the book; I’m not sure about it myself. Maybe it takes a saint to really appreciate it.

And “there is enough x in the real world as it is; I don’t need to see it in art” (a fair paraphrase, I hope) seems like an argument against all works of art, no? Well, except those that distract us from the real world with alternative visions, I guess.

Anyway, I’m certainly not trying to convince people to read it. It’s not pleasant, and might not even be good for you.

What I said was that 'empirical reality in general is not solely constituted by objects and their relations but has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis' - thereby pointing out a lack or absence in the empirical account, namely, the inextricably mental. Doesn't that address your question? — Wayfarer

I’m not sure. On the face of it it’s more or less repeating the analogical argument with empirical reality substituted for the landscape. Also, isn’t there a tension—it could be worse than just a tension, I’m not sure—between the claim that the mental aspect of empirical reality is not revealed empirically, and your appeal to cognitive science? Kant’s transcendental subject is a kind of vanishing point, not a real mind.

That was given as an illustrative analogy, not as the main point of the argument — Wayfarer

Well, yes. I explicitly used it in the same way.

Otherwise, I don’t see how you’ve addressed my question.

A very nicely presented argument which I think is substantially wrong. I hope you don’t mind if I boil things down…

The following analogical argument is obviously wrong (or is it?):

You cannot look at a landscape except from a point of view.
Therefore the landscape is constituted by (or created by) your point of view.

So the question is either: what is the crucial difference in the case of empirical reality in general (as opposed to a landscape) that turns the argument into a good one; or what are the missing premises?

User deleted. :up:

Currently reading Triton by Samuel R. Delany — Jamal

Just finished it — Jamal

Then I started reading it all over again. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.

Coming up next…

Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To…
Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century
Anna Kavan, Ice
Jody Scott, Passing for Human
David Ohle, Motorman
Stanisław Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

I recently noticed that Naomi Klein had published a new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, which centres around her experience of being mistaken for Naomi Wolf for many years, something that began to cause her a lot of trouble as Wolf descended towards batshit crazy. I’m quite curious about it, because for years I’ve avoided Klein’s books, like No Logo, on the basis of this very mistake.