The crash was the only real experience I had been through for years. For the first time I was in physical confrontation with my own body, an inexhaustible encyclopedia of pains and discharges, with the hostile gaze of other people, and with the fact of the dead man.
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This obsession with the sexual possibilities of everything around me had been jerked loose from my mind by the crash. I imagined the ward filled with convalescing air-disaster victims, each of their minds a brothel of images. The crash between our two cars was a model of some ultimate and yet undreamt sexual union.
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Through Vaughan I discovered the true significance of the automobile crash, the meaning of whiplash injuries and roll-over, the ecstasies of head-on collisions. Together we visited the Road Research Laboratory twenty miles to the west of London, and watched the calibrated vehicles crashing into the concrete target blocks. Later, in his apartment, Vaughan screened slow-motion […]
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“You know,” he said, “now that I’ve got used to the idea, I think I’d rather have it this way. We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming. Well, now we do know, and there’s […]
Tags:Death·Disaster·Nuclear·Science Fiction·Society·Stiff Upper Lip
The ultimate scene-setter: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive… .” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like […]
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Synopsis: Bored New York psychiatrist begins living his life according to the roll of a dice in order to escape the constraints of his personality. Unpredictable, but ultimately boring. My Take: There’s promise in the premise of this book. I first heard of “The Dice Man” gimmick via the highly entertaining Discovery Channel travel series […]
Tags:Luke Rhinehart
Synopsis: Privileged LA teen returns to the West Coast on holiday from his East Coast University. The protagonist attempts to confront the emotional emptiness of his casually amoral life the only was he knows how – through sex, drugs and pointless consumption. My Take: In my first year at university I went through a bit […]
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Tags:Bret Easton Ellis
Synopsis: A deeply bitter writer reflects on his aborted affair with a married woman during WW2 London when years after the conclusion of their relationship, he runs into the woman’s husband. Hatred and contempt for self, women and God flows freely. My Take: I have mixed feelings about Graham Greene. One the one hand, he’s […]
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Tags:Graham Greene