Cynics have long noted that there are certain, relatively coarse, artistic vocations in which premature death can be a shrewd career move: consider the presently thriving and/or grossly inflated reputations of, say, James Dean, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. For those who practise the more elite arts, an equally potent and far less drastic option is readily available. Why bother with the agony and mess of drug overdoses or car crashes when you can attain a comparable, pseudo-posthumous mystique just by renouncing your gift? One of the most frequently recounted fables of modernism is the story of the Grand Refusal: Rimbaud chucking in poetry at 19 in favour of African trade and adventure, Duchamp turning from painting and sculpture to chess, Wittgenstein’s scrupulous reluctance, after the early Tractatus, to commit any of his costive ponderings to print, or T. E. Lawrence, hiding from his guilt-laden Arabian accomplishments in the ranks of the RAF.
Enrique Vila-Matas is the latest of umpteen commentators to address this curious phenomenon of modern artists —and, particularly, writers — who have retreated into silence, but he is one of the relatively few who have done so under the guise of fiction.
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