j. g. ballard

• guardian'ın writers' rooms köşesine konuk oldu:
  http://books.guardian.co.uk/…hic/0,,2030530,00.html
  
  my room is dominated by the huge painting, which is a copy of the violation by the belgian surrealist paul delvaux. the original was destroyed during the blitz in 1940, and i commissioned an artist i know, brigid marlin, to make a copy from a photograph. i never stop looking at this painting and its mysterious and beautiful women. sometimes i think i have gone to live inside it and each morning i emerge refreshed. it's a male dream.
  
  there are photos of my four grandchildren (one, along with a picture of my girlfriend claire, is just out of shot). the postcard is dali's persistence of memory, the greatest painting of the 20th century, and next to it is a painting by my daughter, which is the greatest painting of the 21st century. on the desk is my old manual typewriter, which i recently found in my stair cupboard. i was inspired by a letter from will self, who wrote to me on his manual typewriter. so far i have just stared at the old machine, without daring to touch it, but who knows? 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.
  
  i work for three or four hours a day, in the late morning and early afternoon. then i go out for a walk and come back in time for a large gin and tonic.
  jg ballard