Blankness -- for or against?

Here's an interesting dialogue in the Guardian (U.K.) betweeen writers Hari Kunzru and Toby Litt. I don't understand two-thirds of what they're talking about, but I found the idea of "duty-free writing" arresting.

Think about duty-free areas in airports; the brands by and large are similar, so that where you actually are is restricted to the tourist trinkets in the shop; the shape of the small wooden items and the imprint on the silver jewellery are the only clues to your location in the world. .... I think allowing the blankness to rise up and reveal its horror is what is useful for writers to do. There is something terrifying about the loss of place and the death of location, the death of particularity and the total dominance of global culture by a very small section of cultural producers. .... Some of the writing I'd been doing was very like that, this clean well-lit prose. I've become opposed to that as a tendency in myself because it starts to be duty-free prose. The difference between being well-lit and being duty-free is very hard to draw.