Ha! Score, first post.
The premise was certainly enticing - eroticizing car crashes. Edgy and gritty, you know? Showing us how technology has become the medium through which we seek pleasure with one another. Fine and dandy. My beef wasn't with the story itself (thin as it was), it was with the sexual digressions that seemed to repeat over and over, page after page.
'He smelled of semen and engine coolant.' I swear to fuck, I must have heard this expression or some variant a dozen times, with similar phrases (and sometimes whole paragraphs) rehashed over and over, as if making up for the lack of plot.
The language was also funky. Pubis? Mucuous? Sweet hell, I know Ballard used to study medicine and that the whole point of the story is to bind sexuality and technology together, but his diction was overkill. And like I mentioned before, it felt as though he was saying the same thing over and over.
I liked the book, but barely. It's only saving grace was its twisted premise and its constant lewdness, and I'm not sure whether or not it would appeal to others.
I was expecting better, but since I only paid ten bucks for it (perhaps a bit too much, I'm starting to wonder), I'm not shook up.
Stars?
:2stars:
Two stars meaning I disliked the book.
(ps 'Guest' down below was me, I just forgot to sign in).
The premise was certainly enticing - eroticizing car crashes. Edgy and gritty, you know? Showing us how technology has become the medium through which we seek pleasure with one another. Fine and dandy. My beef wasn't with the story itself (thin as it was), it was with the sexual digressions that seemed to repeat over and over, page after page.
'He smelled of semen and engine coolant.' I swear to fuck, I must have heard this expression or some variant a dozen times, with similar phrases (and sometimes whole paragraphs) rehashed over and over, as if making up for the lack of plot.
The language was also funky. Pubis? Mucuous? Sweet hell, I know Ballard used to study medicine and that the whole point of the story is to bind sexuality and technology together, but his diction was overkill. And like I mentioned before, it felt as though he was saying the same thing over and over.
I liked the book, but barely. It's only saving grace was its twisted premise and its constant lewdness, and I'm not sure whether or not it would appeal to others.
I was expecting better, but since I only paid ten bucks for it (perhaps a bit too much, I'm starting to wonder), I'm not shook up.
Stars?
:2stars:
Two stars meaning I disliked the book.
(ps 'Guest' down below was me, I just forgot to sign in).
The woman at the end of the movie had these leg braces on from all the car accidents her and her two male lovers had over the months or years. They drove buy a horrific car crash, got turned on and had sex again. Sheesh.
