The Paradises of the Electric Highway

After reading Robin’s essay “Chapter One: Nothing Declare”, I found myself in a state of questioning. As a fiction writer, whose style resembles that of Transgressive Fiction writers, I felt it hard to establish a true perspective on a non-fiction analysis of this particular kind of genre. Reflecting on the “moral chaos” of the works, and in my own writing, I am aware of one thing:

The intention is anything but formulaic, and moral attention must be paid.

A phrase in the essay that stuck out to me was “imaginative libertinism.” I had never read the word “libertinism” in any piece of literature before. A definition in an online dictionary read,

"A dissolute person; usually a person who is morally unrestrained.”

The literary structures created by the “classics”, such as the Aeneid of Vigil, mentioned in the essay, is hard to compare to Transgressive literature, where “formlessness exists at a cosmic level.” I feel as though the trangressive writers intention may exist for the “soul” purpose of examining consciousness, whether it be theirs, their characters, or the collective.

Trangressive writing seems to me to operate within a similar type of “metaphysical” space I strive for in my writings; to create a “sense that control is located outside of human agency.” This aspect of Tragressive Fiction can easily be compared, to say, the Bible.

It is true that J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash, is overwhelming with a “propensity to misbehave” through what may be considered post-modern innovations in style and language.However, we are living in a “glamour of rebellion” age. Ballard’s novel is written in the “articulation of social standards”, or in a sense realistic and relatable “modern” language. Ballard uses raunchy, sexual fantasies produced by car crashes from the perspective of the main character “James” who may be the voice of Ballad himself.

In a passage James reflects, “The crash between our two cars was a model of some ultimate and yet undreamt sexual union (29)”.

Ballard has found an imaginative way to articulate a perspective that can be related to the society it was written in. James's obsession with car crashes transforms over the novel into a metaphor. It depicts an underlying message of a “spectator” society that has been created by technology.

“The technological landscape no longer provided its sharpest pointers, its keys to the boarder zones of identity” Ballard establishes an ideology in this novel, that seems to be found in a “landscape of [his] life that was now bounded by a continuous artificial horizon… the paradises of the electric highway.” (49)

I do believe these writers are “architects whose minds conceal either laudable or wicked intentions.” Perhaps, the chaos attached to their message cannot then be directly stated, and this “elusiveness prevents the work form being associated with a specific perspective or viewpoint.” The viewpoint is the readers, allowing them to read through the lines these daring writers have left wide open.

We must realize the blanks are only to be filled by a "common" relation to them.This may generate an “unclear moral perspective, with the “willingness to accept the author’s philosophical preconceptions.”

Is it truly a key component of these works that they must always cross a moral line for the sake of writing beyond preexisting literary limitations?

As Ballard says in Crash, “there’s a certain moral virtue in being materialistic” (78).

Does satire truly “abandon good taste with a minimum of soul-searching”? Or does the flexible space of interpretation, and “art of distance” used in various Trangressive works, a tactic towards establishing an audience-friendly, relevant approach to literature. Their works may be more accessible in modern society towards finding their own interpretive genuine meaning; maybe even a moral code.

The works of Transgressive writers may very well be “complicated fictional machines that are full of blind alleys for critics.”

But if so, how does one then begin an analysis, without asking only more and more questions?

“I was convinced that the key to this immense metalized landscape lay somewhere within these constant and unchanging traffic patterns” (65). - J.G. Ballard