12-30-03

Noon today: I read the last page of J.G. Ballard's Crash. I suppose that the perverse eroticism of the characters drove home the point of the novel -- that modern humans are becoming de-humanized. That somehow we only experience great tragedy or pain as being real.

I remember watching television on 9/11 but being unable to watch as the video cameras lovingly followed the horrible arc of people's bodies as they leapt from the WTC before it collapsed. Crash is, to me, like the ghoulish interest of rubberneckers at an accident. It made me, the reader, into a voyeur of pain and death. It felt creepy and sick. Yet it is done so well that I must admire the skill of the author even as I shudder.

I'm going to continue to read among Ballard's works. I"m curious if this fascination with body effluvia and mutilation is an overwhelming obsession.

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