- A London Times 2016 Book of the Year - Part macabre, part
celebration, this book collects tales of historic crashes, with the
focus on the cars involved - Big names like James Dean, Jackson Pollack,
and Princess Grace are among the victims Stephen Bayley recounts
delightfully grotesque tales about celebrities done in by trees, by
lampposts, or by nonentities in ancient Chevys. A design masterpiece,
this book combines exquisite prose with stylish presentation - the cars
are described more lovingly than the people who perished in them. Like a
Bugatti, Death Drive recalls a time when books and cars were beautiful.
Cars have a talismanic quality. No other manufactured object has the
same disturbing allure. More emotions are involved in cars than any
other product: vanity, cupidity, greed, social competitiveness, cultural
modeling. But when all this perverse promise ends in catastrophe, these
same talismanic qualities acquire an extra dimension. The car crash is a
defining phenomenon of popular culture. Death Drive is both an
appreciative essay about the historic place of the automobile in the
modern imagination and an exploration of the circumstances surrounding
multiple celebrity denouements, including Isadora Duncan, Jane
Mansfield, James Dean, Jackson Pollack, Princess Grace, and Helmut
Newton, among many others. En route the narrative traces one very big
arc - the role of the car in extending or creating the personality of a
celebrity - and concludes by confronting the imminent death of the car
itself.
