Editing Crash (Ballard novel) (section)

==Synopsis==
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned "nightmare angel of the highways".<ref name=":32">{{Cite book |last1=Canton |first1=James |title=The Literature Book |last2=Cleary |first2=Helen |last3=Kramer |first3=Ann |last4=Laxby |first4=Robin |last5=Loxley |first5=Diana |last6=Ripley |first6=Esther |last7=Todd |first7=Megan |last8=Shaghar |first8=Hila |last9=Valente |first9=Alex |publisher=[[DK (publisher)|DK]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-4654-2988-9 |location=New York |page=332}}</ref> James meets Vaughan after being injured in a car crash near [[London Heathrow Airport|London Airport]]. Gathering around Vaughan is a group of alienated people, all of them former crash victims, who follow him in his pursuit to re-enact the crashes of [[Hollywood cinema|Hollywood]] celebrities such as [[Jayne Mansfield]] and [[James Dean]], in order to experience what the narrator calls "a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology". Vaughan's ultimate fantasy is to die in a head-on collision with movie star [[Elizabeth Taylor]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8-iHi1IBigC|title=Crash|first=J. G.|last=Ballard|date=October 5, 2001|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=978-0-312-42033-8 |via=Google Books}}</ref>