Just arrived in the post: Ballard’s new novel Kingdom Come. That’ll be my reading matter for the next days — that is, if I managed to tear myself loose from Sorrentino’s Mulligan Stew, a typical postmodern outfit, about an avantgarde novelist trying to write a murder mystery, with his characters discussing their creator. That sort of thing. All about writing and creation. Lots of display of virtuosity, long Joycean lists, lots of verbal invention. The sort of hyper-metafiction that I assumed I was tired of reading, but that turns out to be strangely attractive…