Ballardian

The Guardian has sparked off an unholy war:

When the Guardian referred to Martin Amis as ‘Britain’s greatest living author’ last week, one reader was so outraged she threatened to emigrate - or worse. So if not Amis, who? Stephen Moss assesses the field.”

[ via Ben Austwick ]

Again, Ballard doesn’t make the cut. But wait. In the wake of the outrage, various writers were asked to name the best, with John Crace opining that “…I would not plump for Amis, or any of your McEwans or Ishiguros…JG Ballard has written some good books and fewer shit ones than some other people.”

And this from Ballard himself:

This is one of those questions that makes one suspect we are in the trough of the literary wave. It is not a great time for writing in the English language. The last literary classic was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and that was published in the early 60s. That is the only novel in English that I can imagine surviving until the middle of this century.

It is mysterious why that is. We have lived through some incredibly stirring times, but where are the great writers? When I came to Britain in 1946, George Orwell was about to publish 1984, and Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh were all producing important work. We have talented writers such as Amis and Will Self, but I don’t see anyone of the stature of these postwar writers.

We no longer live in a literary culture and have not for some while. The American novel is a huge self-indulgent bore, playwrights are flattered and self-indulged, and most of the poets have never produced a memorable line. The last book to influence the English-speaking world in a serious way was 1984. No book since then has changed the world. Literary culture was based on certain notions about social reality. But we are not interested in that any more — everything is up for grabs. The most important thing now is a celebrity chav called Jade Goody.”

[ thanks, Simon Rees ]