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Writer's Rooms

ballard.jpg

J.G. Ballard is featured in the latest installment "Writer's Rooms" at the Guardian Unlimited. The series asks writers to comment on a picture of their workspace.

The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.

I have worked at this desk for the past 47 years. All my novels have been written on it, and old papers of every kind have accumulated like a great reef. The chair is an old dining-room chair that my mother brought back from China and probably one I sat on as a child, so it has known me for a very long time. A Paolozzi screen-print is resting against the door, which now serves as a cat barrier during the summer months. My neighbour's cats are enormously affectionate, and in the summer leap up on to my desk and then churn up all my papers into a huge whirlwind. They are my fiercest critics.

Other writers featured include A.S. Byatt, David Lodge, and Sarah Waters, among others.

[via ballardian]