![]() A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. He might not be as great a writer as those just mentioned, but much of our present reality now falls within the jurisdiction of Ballard’s imagination.Įspecially now that life is presided over by a lethal viral pandemic, it’s hard to even glance at the news without coming across a story that could be the result of some kind of Ballard-inspired role-playing exercise. But the writer who owns the largest part of the world right now is JG Ballard. ![]() ![]() Feeling bored and sort of fancily anxious and also for some reason harassed by the wind in Southern California? That would be Joan Didion, obviously. Going anywhere or doing anything or talking to anyone in Dublin? Joyce. ![]() If you’re enduring sustained exposure to a confoundingly complex bureaucracy? That’s Kafka. There are certain writers who, once you’ve read them, forever take possession of some part of your experience of the world. ![]()
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