 74 x 74cm)
Writers are often asked if they have to stop reading other books while they're writing their own books in case they are unduly influenced...
"Writers are often asked if they have to stop reading other books while they're writing their own books in case they are unduly influenced. This is a ridiculous question. The typical novelist has a novel in progress at all times, so if he followed that rule, he would never again be able to take pleasure in his own medium. As Colm Tóibín has written, “It would be like saying: ‘Do you refrain from sex when you are writing a novel?’ No, I don't.” Once you're good enough to be published, you should be good enough to keep a confident grip on your own style. And I think I usually am. But there are exceptions. About half way through writing my novel Boxer, Beetle, I binged on early JG Ballard, and I'm ashamed to say that an attentive reader could probably locate that occurrence almost down to the paragraph. There is something about Ballard's language that is savagely contagious. I think even if you'd been writing novels for decades, the first time you encountered his work you'd feel as pliable as a first-term creative writing student.
I first saw Bronwen Sleigh's captivating work at an RCA degree show two years ago, around the same time I was immersing myself in Ballard, and I assumed immediately that she was off down the same tunnel. Her prints seemed like clear developments of Ballard's obsessions: pitted concrete, sinister wastegrounds, derelict cities and cybernetics. But when I finally met Bronwen at a group show in Kensington, I learned that she'd barely read Ballard. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised: there's no reason why a writer who peaked in the 1960s should maintain a monopoly on those themes, and his indirect influence has trickled down through a thousand different channels. Last year, I bought three of Bronwen's large prints, and they're still my most prized possessions. Ballard's influence on my work isn't something I'm trying to escape, it's something I'm trying to balance, and when I look at the prints on my wall, I'm reminded that a great writer like Ballard can discover a territory without therefore ruling every inch of it – that more colonists can arrive, much later, either ignorant of his precedence, or reverent but rebellious."
Read more articles by Ned Beauman in his column Epitaph.
