Having recently attempted to compile a list of every book I have ever read, I came to realise that either I have a memory like a sieve, or my familiarity with modern and classic literature is not nearly as good as I had hoped. Unfortunately I suspect the later.
To but it bluntly: I’ve read far too much crap and not enough classic books. So to stem this avalanche of pulp I’ve started a little mid-year resolution to pick up some of the those more daunting books that over the years I’ve bought and put on the shelf without a second glance.
I kicked it off over the weekend with J.B. Ballard’s Crash. Now Ballard is one of those authors who’s name’s always popping up on my radar. He’s always being cited as a source of inspiration for so many other writers and musicians that I’m kind of surprised I’ve never got round to him before.
And in theory Crash seems like a book I would like. Cultish, clever, provocative: it’s about sex, technology, society and the interaction between them all. It’s been feted as a work of genius but I’ve got to be honest, within a few pages Ballard’s descriptions of gruesome car crash wounds with their lurid sexual overtones quite successfully shocked and disgusted me.
I say successfully because wasn’t that the point? Isn’t Crash supposed to be an extreme metaphor that uses shock and repulsion to drive home Ballard’s observations on modern society? (pun definitely intended)
In the foreword he writes “I would like to think Crash is the first pornographic novel based on technology.” Although I can’t vouch for it being the ‘first’ I would certainly agree that it is steeped in violent and sexual content that envisions the car crash as an act of “sinister portent, a nightmare marriage between sex and technology.”
So it’s all quite contemplative and metaphorical, and although I expected the initial shock of the gore and explicit sex to wane, it didn’t happen. Each climactic scene introduced some new twist, as memorable as it was nauseating. That though is only a testament to Ballard’s writing. His style is neat and simple, clipped and concise, yet there’s still enough room for his characters to come to life. Not that it takes much effort, after all as Ballard himself wrote “the fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.”
So Crash was the first book on this new course of mine. To follow it up I’m now half way through The Centaur by John Updike. After that I’ll be reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hermann Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel. Now there’s a connection between these five novels and if you can guess what it is I’ll send you something nice. No Googling, answers on a postcard.
