Books

A unique uncorrected proof copy of Ballard s infamous work about car-crash sexual fetishism. Coming from the library of Martin Bax, founding editor of the poetry and arts magazine Ambit (1959-2023), to which Ballard sometimes contributed, this copy contains numerous intriguing edits to the text in Ballard s own hand. These changes do not appear in the published version, but rather seem as though the writer has gone back to his own work post-publication and revised various passages. A nice copy inscriptions aside, issued by Jonathan Cape in 1973, with a descriptive pastedown to the frontispiece that differs from the blurb found on the published version, as does the price, which went down from the �2.75 proposed here to �2.25 in the end. The published work also lost the exclamation point in the title.

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.