Zadie Smith on J.G. Ballard in The New York Review of Books, recommended, if for no other reason than for this Ballard quote:

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind…. We live inside an enormous novel…. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent reality.”

(Read the article here.)

Exactly, the writer’s task is to invent reality, or rather to dig up reality.