Withheld art

Thanks to Roy for reminding me about Don DeLillo's Mao II and the following quotation:

The withheld work of art is the only eloquence left

In spite of the fact that the subject is something of an ongoing theme for me, and the rather more pertinent fact that I'm the holder of a qualification which is all to do with DeLillo, I'd forgotten all about it.

But he gets in your blood, obviously. Though I've blocked him from my consciousness and sworn never to read another one of his books, everything I do and say is DeLillo-filtered.

You get sick of the style, in the end. In the end you can't read another page without wanting to throw the book across the room. If he'd withheld The Body Artist, that would have been eloquent indeed. If he'd done that, I might still be able to read him. I hated that book in the same way that you come to hate Merry Xma2 Everybody by Slade.