Customer Reviews

THE BODY ARTIST.

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

The Body Artist is one of the strangest--and most seductive--books I've read in a long time, a "ghost story" with a character who is described as if he were real, and whom the main character believes to be real, and who may, in fact, be real--but who may also be a figment of imagination. Events which are described as real may be fantasies, and even the relationships the main character has or has had with people who seem to be real may, in fact, be colored by wishful thinking. Ultimately, even the linear progression of the narrative itself is called into question since, DeLillo tells us, "Past, present, and future are not amenities of language."

The story begins with the intimately described minutiae of breakfast, as a couple, married just a short time, gets ready for the day. We learn that it takes two cycles on the toaster to get the bread the right color, that the cup is his and the paper is hers, that a blue jay comes to the bird feeder, that she puts soya on her cereal and that it smells like feet. When Rey Robles, the husband, dies later that day (something we know from the beginning), the world of the wife, Lauren Hartke, changes from one of communication and an outward focus to a world of grief and an inward focus. When she discovers a stranger living on the third floor of her rented house, we aren't sure whether he is real or whether he materializes to show Lauren's unresolved feelings about her loss and the depth of her trauma. The stranger, dubbed Mr. Tuttle, is handicapped, unable to understand or communicate in language in any traditional way.

Fascinating in its focus on internal action, the reader must ultimately just accept the story for what it is while enjoying the glories of the meticulous prose, the acutely felt portrait of a woman grieving, the suggested symbolism in birds and nature, and the author's depiction of the ambiguities and uncertainties of life and time. This is a work which uses language in new ways, ultimately even calling into question the use of language itself to make sense of the world. Like Lauren, DeLillo himself is a performance artist. Mary Whipple

This is a not a dramatic book. This is a book that you read on a rainy afternoon in one sitting and bathe in the mood. The sentences are short at times, choppy and fragmented--a complaint made by the current "spot light reviewer". This is done for reason, for mood, and for effect. To some it may feel like a published experimental garbage-dump only gotten into print because of DeLillo's fantastic reputation. However, to read this book well you have to look at it as a whole.

The title, "The Body Artist", has as much bearing on this short work as the characters inside it. There is a backround of artistry, one of ambiguous interpretation not unlike those "new age" plays shown in the city. The book is light and dense at the same time; some of the sentences will strike you as odd and uneeded with no depth, while other scenes will captivate you with an overwhelming feeling of depression--hopefully lasting throughout the length of the novel. While I was reading, the book almost called for a scholarly analysis of theme and characterization: like I said, if read right the feeling of despair and eccentricity will seep into you. Read it with an artistic viewpoint and you'll be nicely rewarded.

After his sprawling 'Underworld', DeLillo wrote this whimsy of a book. But don't be fooled by the slimness of this volume... the themes of love, loss and death are probed as thoroughly and poetically as only DeLillo knows how.

Lauren's observations in the beginning are masterfully written. Everyday events and ritualistic details are written with an elliptical, but precise grace. It's a deliberate slowing down of the cognitive process (of Lauren's, and in turn, ours) to plumb the mysteries of what we commonly take as given.

Rey's death resounds throughout the book, and the weird stranger/ghost that inhabits the house is one of the most haunting characters/ideas I've read in recent years. Lauren's sense of loss, and the physical craving to fill such loss, such sorrow are expertly drawn, with unflinching emotional honesty.

It's a refreshing surprise to find that one of the most maximalist, post-modern fictioneers we have in America is also one of the more intricate miniaturists. Very impressive.

The Body Artist is one of the strangest--and most seductive--books I've read in a long time, a "ghost story" with a character who is described as if he were real, and whom the main character believes to be real, and who may, in fact, be real--but who may also be a figment of imagination. Events which are described as real may be fantasies, and even the relationships the main character has or has had with people who seem to be real may, in fact, be colored by wishful thinking. Ultimately, even the linear progression of the narrative itself is called into question since, DeLillo tells us, "Past, present, and future are not amenities of language."

The story begins with the intimately described minutiae of breakfast, as a couple, married just a short time, gets ready for the day. We learn that it takes two cycles on the toaster to get the bread the right color, that the cup is his and the paper is hers, that a blue jay comes to the bird feeder, that she puts soya on her cereal and that it smells like feet. When Rey Robles, the husband, dies later that day (something we know from the beginning), the world of the wife, Lauren Hartke, changes from one of communication and an outward focus to a world of grief and an inward focus. When she discovers a stranger living on the third floor of her rented house, we aren't sure whether he is real or whether he materializes to show Lauren's unresolved feelings about her loss and the depth of her trauma. The stranger, dubbed Mr. Tuttle, is handicapped, unable to understand or communicate in language in any traditional way.

Fascinating in its focus on internal action, the reader must ultimately just accept the story for what it is while enjoying the glories of the meticulous prose, the acutely felt portrait of a woman grieving, the suggested symbolism in birds and nature, and the author's depiction of the ambiguities and uncertainties of life and time. This is a work which uses language in new ways, ultimately even calling into question the use of language itself to make sense of the world. Like Lauren, DeLillo himself is a performance artist. Mary Whipple

"The Body Artist" by Don DeLillo is simply a rare escapade into the world of literary realism. There is so much harmony in this book that it I found it difficult to disassociate myself from the hypnotic force of its words.

The novel is a very comprehensive observation into the psyche of a lonely widow whose profession is to paint the reality of her feelings, emotions and experiences via her artistic skill - the capacity to manipulate her own body during performances during which she enacts her own personality as well as those of her dead husband and a ghost. But it really doesn't matter what the story is about and I can't stop repeating this ever since reading Franzen's "The Corrections". The realism of these highly effective magicians (DeLillo, Franzen, Auster) dubbed writers by the society, is so captivating that the only reason I pick up their books is to immerse myself in the pure texture of words. With these types of books there is no need to compose a thrill ride, or mystery, or some bizarre supernatural occurrence. There isn't a need because the construction of their works is supernatural itself. I may be sitting down, or laying down, or walking when I read or listen to these books, but I might just as well be blind, or a prisoner, or a king somewhere, it simply wouldn't matter, because every time I'm instantaneously transformed into a giant ear, a colossal eye, an infinite brain whose only task is to acquire and process, and feed on the beauty of their words. And so that's all. This book, like the rare few out there is a precious gem. It should be studied, it should be a required material in schools, it should be praised. I highly recommend it.

- by Simon Cleveland

This book kept me in a trance for the two hours it took me to read it. I, unlike previous reviewers came away Euphoric. The Author, Don DeLillo, takes you on a journey into the mind of a wife reliving what she thought was just another uneventful morning she had with her husband.

You have to pay attention, otherwise you miss the point that everyone goes about their daily lives in a kind of mindless way until something shocking happens. In this case it's the death of Lauren's husband and she replays over and over again their last conversation and all the mundane things that happen all around them like toasting bread and watching birds feeding outside the kitchen window.

To me, the Author's point was that you take for granted that someone you love will always be there until by some unfortunate event they are yanked away and you are left with recreating the short time you had together.

Just as suddenly as Rey, Lauren's husband is pulled out of the story, a strange man is discovered in the house. It's left up to the readers imagination to figure out whether the man is real, a ghost, an imaginery friend or even an alien. Without revealing too much, Lauren loses herself to the task of discovering why the man is there in the house with her and in doing so unknowingly examines her own life.

DeLillo is perhaps the best literary novelist we have at this time, which the career-defining masterwork "Underworld" made clear to his largest readership yet: at the end of all those perfect sentences , sallow images and and long, winding, aching paragraphs is a narrative voice whose intelligence engages the fractured nature of identity in a media-glutted age.

"The Body Artist" has him contracting the narrative concerns to a tight, elliptical 128 pages, where the Joycean impulse to have a private art furnish meaning to grievous experience is prefered over the dead promises of religion and philosophy. What exactly the woman character does with her performance body art, what the point is of her ritutalized , obsessed cleansing of her body, is a mystery of DeLilloian cast, but it's evident that we're witnessing to a private ritual whose codes won't reveal themselves, but are intended as a way for the woman to again have a psychic terrain she can inhabit following the sudden and devastating death of her film maker husband.

The entrance of the stranger in the cottage turns her aesthetic self-absorption , slowly but inevitably, into a search into her past in order to give her experience meaning, resonance, a project she quite handily ignores until then. The sure unveiling of her psychic life is a haunting literary event.

DeLillo's language is crisp, evocative, precise to the mood and his ideas: you envy his flawless grasp of rhythm and diction as these traits simultaneously make the cottage on the cold , lonely coast seem sharp as snap shot, but blurred like old memory, roads and forests in a foggy shroud.

A short, haunted masterwork.

Some may dismiss "The Body Artist" as a minor work after DeLillo's sprawling masterpiece "Underworld." In heft, this is a lighter work, an easy evening read. But in style and subject, DeLillo breaks new ground with this novel and achieves surprising poignancy.

The book begins with DeLillo's trademark observation -- a couple, unknown to us, go through a morning's breakfast routine. Here DeLillo is the DeLillo we know, microanalyzing how Rey spoons the insides of a fig and spreads it on his toast, repeating three, four, five times how Lauren must push the toaster lever down twice to get bread toasted the way she likes. In previous novels, DeLillo has used this technique to point out the banality of modern life, and I assumed he was doing it again.

But "The Body Artist" is not "White Noise." Lauren Hartdke is not everywoman, she is a flesh and blood character dealing with painful loss. To say much more about the plot would risk giving everything away -- after all, the story is less than 120 pages. It's the size and form of a short story and should be read like one, in one sitting.

I can say that DeLillo reinvents himself with this work, finding beauty in modern banality, even sorrow in its loss. For all the intellect and power in DeLillo's previous works, they could leave many readers cold. "The Body Artist" is a beautiful exercise for DeLillo, evidence that one of our finest living writers may have his best works ahead of him.

This is one long beautiful poem. Really. Raw, complex poetry. So intense in fact, that you have to pay attention or you'll miss it. The plot is simple. There is a widow grieving her husband's death, there is a stranger who shows up for a season (literally or not) then leaves again. There is her performance...an account of the entire experience. But lets throw plots and whatnot to the wind for a second. This guy's writing reminds me of lovemaking. He takes you through this hazy tunnel where everything is magnified and significant. A bird outside a window...pouring juice in a glass. You get lost in the wife's grief. It becomes the readers grief as well. This is a work of poetry. When I turned the final page I found myself staring at the wall for an eerie second before I came back to reality.
An awesome writer...I'd recommend this for any literary group or class.

Husband dies. Woman grieves. Grief takes her places she never imagined she'd go. Delillo explores the intricacies of the grieving mind, what things it might imagine, believe, and act on in the face of overwhelming sorrow. Where does one go from here?

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens