'Strange Attractors'

[version]

" ... by Sinclair’s account, the signs of 'having it' are not isolated to the work a writer produces. The Hackney author has remarked on the frequency of coincidences connected in some way to Ballard, one of the writers he returns to again and again in his own work. The greatest writers, the ‘magi’ as Sinclair has called Ballard and others, seem to be strange attractors (to repeat Baudrillard’s flagrant misuse of that term), drawing into their orbits coincidental happenings, whether happy or baleful."

 

[version]

I don't know whether it makes these writers better than others, but it's definitely something I've experienced with some of my favourites. That recent incident with the train derailment right out of DeLillo was particularly unnerving.