Martin Amis on JG Ballard

I found a review Martin Amis did on JG Ballard's Crash and the movie adaptation by Cronenberg. Interesting to read the thoughts of one author we've discussed on another author we've discussed. I found his thoughts on the film in contrast to the movie especially interesting, I think a lot of his gripes with how the film was executed really hit the nail on the head as far as what the film was missing, for me at least. An excerpt from the piece:

Cronenberg had to take this vision and submit it to the literalism of film. He
has also chosen to transport it through time: close to a quarter of a century.
And it seems to me that all the film’s dissonances arise from that shift. In 1973
the automobile could be seen as something erotic, conjuring up freedom and
power. In 1996 the associations point the other way, towards banality: car
pools, leadless fuel and asthma. Nowadays the poor old jamjar conjures up
nothing more than a frowsy stoicism. Cronenberg might as well have gone with
tail-fins, flared trousers, mini-skirts and beehives, so remorselessly does the
piece insist on its historical slot. The sex feels pre-Aids; the work-shy
sensualism feels pre-inflation; even the roads feel pre-gridlock. These cavils
may seem pedestrian -- but car culture feels pedestrian, too, as the millennium
nears.
On the other hand it feels delightfully nostalgic, and triumphantly retro, to sit
in a theatre watching an intelligent and unusual art movie. Cronenberg has
somehow found the cinematic equivalent of Ballard’s hypnotic gaze: the
balefulness, the haggard fixity. By excluding all common sense (and therefore
all humour), obsession invites comedy, and Crash is almost a very funny film.
By a similar logic, the monomaniacal interestingly frail. Cronenberg’s ending
isn’t there in the Ballard; it achieves a tragic modulation among all the
gauntness and passivity.

If you want to read the entire essay, you can view/download it here.