Gordon Burn: journalism as a novel, the novel as journalism

In the disputed terrain of literary journalism, the English journalist, novelist and non-fiction writer Gordon Burn (1948-2009) has a problematic place. Burn is, with the late J.G. Ballard, arguably the most original post-modern English novelist of the latter half of the 20th century, bar none: a writer of provocative scope and ambition in his subversion and transgression of traditional narrative forms and his critical playfulness with the norms of the dominant media culture. Despite an unprivileged background, the rigour, industry and inventiveness of his work puts most well-rewarded English writers of his generation to shame. Full recognition of his exceptional skills remains limited: in Doug Underwood’s recent magisterial listing of the “major journalist-literary figures” his name is conspicuously absent (Underwood 2008: 199-235). A hard-working journalist all his life, and an extraordinarily good one, his work continuously questions the role of the journalist in contemporary culture.