A little Crash

I thought of writing about death in J.G. Ballard's Crash, about why the 1973 novel's handling of the subject might interest crime readers and writers, though Crash is no crime novel (or if it is, the crime is unpunished vehicular homicide).

But too much else is going on in the book — obsession, eroticism, technology,  technological and erotic obsession, eroticized technology, Elizabeth Taylor — for me to start asking what it all means. So for now, here's a passage that might give our celebrity-obsessed age pause:

"As one of the first of the new-style TV scientists, Vaughan had combined a high degree of personal glamour — heavy black hair over a scarred face, an American combat jacket — with an aggressive lecture-theatre manner and complete conviction in his subject matter ... Vaughan had projected a potent image, almost that of a scientist as hoodlum, driving about from laboratory to television centre on a high-powered motorcycle. Literate, ambitious and adept at self-publicity, he was saved from being no more than a pushy careerist with a Ph.D. by a strain of naive idealism ..."

© Peter Rozovsky 2011