Books

Jonathan Cape, London, 1973 8vo. Green paper wrappers with black lettering to spine; descriptive pastedown to the frontispiece; pp. [4] 224; slight discolouration on front cover and to top and side of template; minor bruising to spine, ink penned annotations to pg. 53 & 59, 108 & 109, 124 & 125/126/127 & 200. This uncorrected proof contains numerous edits by Ballard himself. These changes do not appear in the published version but seem to have been passages revised post-publication. The published work also lost the exclamation point in the title of this edition. The descriptive pastedown to the frontispiece is also not the same as the blurb of the published version. This edition comes from the library of Martin Bax, founding editor of the poetry and arts magazine Ambit (1959-2023) , to which Ballard sometimes contributed “I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.”… A highly controversial and cult work, exploring the…

Crash is a novel by English author J. G. Ballard, first published in 1973. It is a story about symphorophilia; specifically car-crash sexual fetishism: its protagonists become sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car-crashes.