Crash

By Nicole Williams

romance | 223 pages | Published in 1973

In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, "Crash" explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.