The Voice of John Self, pages 52 to 117

The most obvious tactic of voice-driven fiction is that it forces the reader to rely solely on what the narrator says. Speculation is futile because when or if anything in the plot is revealed it is still under the subjective guise of the voice. Let's say that the criteria for a "successful" voice is that it is a) convincing and b) incites some feeling within the reader to relate to or at least pity the narrator. Examined next to these two points John Self is a champion narrator. Despite his horrifying eating, drinking, pornography, misogynistic habits he manages to keep the reader not only curious and entertained but feel something beyond disgust. A few classmates admitted to experiencing: sympathy, pity, and even a little concept-harmony. John Self described by someone else through base terms would never provoke any of the listed responses but because his inner monologue is so intriguing he's turned himself into a sympathy-inducing antihero.

There is a very long paragraph that starts on (my) page 64 with "Standing in the nordic nook of the kitchen, I can gaze down at the flimsy-limbed joggers heading south towards the Park. It's nearly as bad as New York." Within this paragraph John let's us on quite a few things that go beyond his disdain for exercising and his cold apartment. Below we have an example of how John manages to convince us that his condition isn't actually his fault:
"Now they want to feel terrific for ever. The Sixties taught us this, that it was hateful to be old. I am a product of the Sixties - an obedient, unsmiling, no-comment product of the Sixties - but in this matter my true sympathies go further back, to those days of yore when no one minded feeling like death the whole time" (64). 
He resents the societal impulse to exercise and passes it off as some cultural fad or idea that doesn't have any true backing and yet somehow he's convincing. There's an element of self-righteousness in his character that makes the reader want to believe his rants. On the next page he says, "it does my poor old ticker good to see someone really totalled - by his own hand, mind you. Not blasted by outside nature or misfortune, which only frightens me." In one breath he stands up for something totally outrageous (being so drunk during a business lunch that he needs to vomit) while displaying some bizarrely touching vulnerability.
Despite the fact that Fielding has convinced John that he really impressed Butch, the end of this paragraph suggests he might have urinated on himself instead. An act that wouldn't count as a "hit" with a glamorous actress. A lot of the success in our narrator's voice comes from the truthful and purposeful ignorance of humiliation. "Ay! don't let it touch me! Keep it away... So I lock the suit up again, back in the slammer with its partners in crime... far from my touch" (66). His tendency to bury the unwanted is the perfect excuse for alcoholism and the relentless need to make more money.

Amis's "Money"

Is the mysterious caller John's conscience cricket?

What an incredible dissection of an alcoholic's lifestyle! So much blacking out, so much regret. It's really depressing. There is an element of monotony but it might only be a symptom of severe self loathing or of someone who has definitely given up. The book is no where near as emotionless as Crash.

Everything is drawn very cartoonishly: Selina's outfits, the tennis match ("Fielding... holding his barndoor-sized steel bat in one hand and a dozen yellow tennis balls in the other" pg 31), Fielding in general...

What to make of the description lists? Selina's wardrobe and list of fears (page 15) sets up a nice definition of her.

The telephone as a friend and enemy. Money as the answer to everything: obesity, love, friendship.

Caduta Massi means "rock fall" in Italian. Beau soleil means sunshine but that's less interesting than rock fall.

Intent in "Crash"

Crash is something other than just disruptive. Ballard is using Symphorophilia as a cultural result of technological dependency and passing judgements on societal tendencies towards violence and low-brow culture. James's world is contained in metal machines, with a constant upper barrage of airplanes and fly overs and the traffice-clogged roads that travel under the Ballard's balcony but the narrator isn't condemning this new society for losing sight of the natural world. The only mode of transportation used by the central characters is the automobile so they themselves are held in metal eggs whenever they leave their homes. Interaction in the outside world only occurs while inside these cars and true communication only comes when they crash into each other. According to James, these crashes allow for new understandings of sexuality: the crash "victim" experiences not just a mental sexual awakening but also a physical one in the form of "new orifices." James actually fantasizes about the destruction of his wife's mouth and face in an accident, "a new exciting orifice opened in her perineum by the splintering steering column, neither vagina nor rectum, an orifice we could dress with all our deepest affections" (180). Here, Ballard runs with the idea of the inevitable transgressive.

If societal tendency moves towards knocking down what has become familiar and rebuilding something in the name of revolution or a cultural shift then perhaps Ballard is considering a true future. Within the character's themselves there is a feeling of constant search: James and Catherine first look for ways to keep each other sexually aroused and turn to intentional and open adultery; James's crash opens new understandings of arousal with just the idea of violence, then with Gabrielle's wounds, then with Vaughn. In our contemporary world cars are very much a part of daily normal life. I think Ballard belives that humans will soon have to respond to this normativity in the same way that they have responded to other cultural stagnancy (flappers, hippies, punks, etc).

I have the distinct feeling that Ballard has very little faith in humanity. The fascination with celebrities throughout the book and the throngs of people that gather around the car crashes condemn the low-brow addiction to lives more interesting than our own. Snippets of fame and violence are jarring reminders that normal life is boring?

One more note: the word marriage is really stuck in wherever it'll fit within the last fifty to 100 pages. The marrige of the metal and organic bodies is interesting but I haven't figured out why yet...

James and Vaughn

Let's focus on the hypothesis that JG Ballard is interested in showing his readers how disturbing or embarrassing it is to depend so much on technology. The hierarchy of characters in Crash is based on not only the damage they've received from automobiles but also from their lack of emotional receptors. To James there is also an element of sexual awakening that accompanies these life-threatening moments. It is unclear whether or not any of the crash victims besides James experience this awakening but if we look to him as a paragon of the enlightened then perhaps they must. With our introduction to Vaughn, James slips in the idea that "he was saved from being no more than a pushy careerist with a Pd.D by a strain of naive idealism, his strange vision of the automobile and its real role in our lives" (64). James might actually look to Vaughn as something of a prophet. He knows much more than everyone else about this compartment everyone spends all of their time inside. This puts a bizarre spin on the idea that JG Ballard is denouncing the public's insistence on driving/the materialism associated with driving. It isn't that the people shouldn't be obsessed with their cars but that they are obsessed with them for the wrong reasons. Vaughn knows the right reasons to manipulate and understand traffic.

Vaughn's lack of emotion, dented features and obsession with death-by-crash can be interpreted as his movement away from human "normalcy" and towards some weird automobile/technological machine mash up. James's obsession with the sexual potential or nature of cars is revealed in several passages that blend the line between organic and mechanical shapes. During his first sexual encounter with Helen in his car: "This small space was crowded with angular control surfaces and rounded sections of human bodies interacting in unfamiliar junctions..." (80); "The plastic laminates around me, the color of washed anthracite, were the same tones as her pubic hairs... The passenger compartment enclosed us like a machine generating from our sexual act an homunculus of blood, semen and engine coolant" (81). In this last passage James actually conjures up a baby created by their bodies and the car.

It should be noted that after James can drive alone he and Catherine don't drive in the same car even if they're going to the same place.

Ballard's "Crash"

In Crash the mechanics of automobiles acts as a filter for the narrator's sex life. Or, if not a filter than a substitute for elements of a sexual act.

As with his wife's inability to "reach orgasm without an elaborate fantasy of a lesbian sex-act" (35), he himself is unable to think about his wounds without thinking about sex. "These descriptions seemed to be a language in search of new objects, or even, perhaps, the beginnings of a new sexuality divorced from any possible physical expression" (35). He might be suggesting that as one ages senses dull and new ways to stimulate have to be invented. Catherine and her husbands sex lives have to be constantly reconsidered in new lights: violent news, lesbianism, and now his accident.