Cannes jury president Francis Ford Coppola noted that "certain (jury) members did abstain very passionately" from endorsing Cronenberg's film, but added that it was important to give Crash an award, "even though in mining some truth of the human condition it offended (certain viewers)". A head on crash that kills the driver of the other car putting both Ballard and the wife of the dead man in the hospital for a lengthy recovery. I knew that she was about to enter that period of unthinking promiscuity through which most people pass after a bereavement.

Needless to say, the ultimate role of Crash is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape. The accident serves as his sexual awakening, and he is introduced to a group of people whose sexual fantasies revolve around car accidents, wounds, bodily fluids and metal.I understand that this is a book about them in general and about one fairly inscrutable one in particular. He needs to stay close enough to get splattered with semen and blood, and drink the erotic cocktail of sex, cars, and pain. This is definitely not a book for the kids, and probably also not for impressionable adolescents getting their learner's permit. I was checking the map and looked up just as a deer stepped out into the road in front of me as casually as if he were John Steed going for a walk in a London park lacking only the hat and a fine walking stick.

She is now standing by the scene of the accident, watching the emergency vehicles arrive and tend to the injured passengers. Robert Vaughan, who takes a keen interest in the brace holding James's shattered leg together and photographs it.Ballard becomes very introspective, coming to terms with the concept of his own mortality and his desire to feel alive in the way he did after surviving the car crash. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Robert Macfarlane, Martin Amis, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.