More constructively, I think it would be interesting to look at the article in the light of Sinclair’s comments about place and mythology during his discussion with Mike Moorcock and Alan Moore earlier this year, a video of which can be found (in two parts) at http://www.multiverse.org/media/MMLondon1.wmv and http://www.multiverse.org/media/MMLondon2.wmv; (the comments are in the second part, in response to a question from the audience 10 minutes 25 seconds in).

I was particularly struck by Sinclair’s comment about the need to create a mythology in order to avoid getting overwhelmed by other people’s mythologies. That, it seems to me, is similar to the underlying thread that runs through Ballard’s novels of suburbia, and especially “The Unlimited Dream Company” and “Kingdom Come”, that we need to use our imagination or we will be devoured by somebody else’s imagination (all too graphically devoured in UDC!). In a sense, the problematic that Sinclair and Ballard address is the same, but their ways of finding a way out are different … to simplify, Ballard’s starting point is typically to accept the external and then initiate change from the internal. But perhaps it’s moot how much Sinclair’s “creation of mythologies”, if that’s what it is, really differs from Ballard.

I’m not sure what the ‘moral validity’ of a writer’s ‘methods’ might mean either.