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The Body Artist

don delillo

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The Body Artist begins with normality: breakfast between a married couple, Lauren and Rey, in their ramshackle rented house on the New England coast. Recording their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words, Don DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of our idiosyncratic relationships. But after breakfast, Rey makes a decision that leaves Lauren utterly alone, or seems to.

As Lauren, the body artist of the title, becomes strangely detached from herself and the temporal world, the novel becomes an exploration of a highly abnormal grieving process; a fascinating exposé of 'who we are when we are not rehearsing who we are'; and a rarefied study of trauma and creativity, absence and presence, isolation and communion.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2001
Literary awards
james tait black memorial prize, 

This edition

Format
128 pages, Paperback
Published
February 5, 2002 by Scribner
ISBN
9780743203968
ASIN
0743203968
Language
English

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About the author

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don delillo

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Donald Richard DeLillo is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.
DeLillo was already a well-regarded cult writer in 1985, when the publication of White Noise brought him widespread recognition and the National Book Award for fiction. He followed this in 1988 with Libra, a novel about the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II, about terrorism and the media's scrutiny of writers' private lives, and the William Dean Howells Medal for Underworld, a historical novel that ranges in time from the dawn of the Cold War to the birth of the Internet. He was awarded the 1999 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2010, and the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
DeLillo has described his themes as "living in dangerous times" and "the inner life of the culture." In a 2005 interview, he said that writers "must oppose systems. It's important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments... I think writers, by nature, must oppose things, oppose whatever power tries to impose on us."

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
28(28%)
4 stars
38(38%)
3 stars
33(33%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
WatchItAll
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Here is a book that must be recited. Surely it is of 3 stars, yet there are things that I still don't understand or that surprise me.


It is a short novel, about an artist who is forced to survive the days after her husband's suicide. Living alone in a vacation house, she feels the loneliness and the presence of her husband in all the gestures and ordinary objects. A mysterious presence takes her out of this state. We don't know if the presence is a ghost, an imagination or a kind of reincarnation of the dead husband.


The story is full of mystery and emotions. The author manages to create a tense atmosphere that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. The characters are well-developed and the plot is engaging. However, there are some parts that are a bit confusing and could have been explained better.


Overall, it is a good read, but it could have been even better with a bit more clarity and depth.

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ChibiHime
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Body art is a small novel where everything «happens around the verb to seem»: the physical presence of the world, of people, everything seems «to flow with a dissociative movement, giving the impression of, or presenting the appearance of». Even the pain of the protagonist, the body artist Laurene Hartke, takes on the guise of a deformed man with unintelligible language («Being here happened to me. I am with the moment, I will leave the moment»).

Don DeLillo's gaze - no longer interested in the monumental snapshots of American society - is lean and meticulous. It insinuates itself into the silences and voids of a grief, of an (apparently) insurmountable and tangible anguish, emphasizing the metamorphic body of the artist and her perceptions.

The body art - the author seems to suggest to us - is nothing more than this: the possibility of sublimating suffering, giving it a form and, finally, assimilating it. It's a journey of self-discovery and transformation through the medium of the body. The story unfolds in a way that makes us question our own perceptions of reality and the meaning we赋予 to our experiences. It shows how art can be a powerful tool for dealing with pain and finding a sense of purpose in life.
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GHWolfKing
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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A sensual, hyper-real Delillian song. Donnie's poetic prose lilts in sustained focus through ghostly sibilance, sinusoidally evocative and throb-inducing. It's as if the words dance in the air, creating a magical atmosphere that captivates the reader.


A brief encounter and a drawn-out epiphany. An instant under a microscope reveals such texture as the merely human eye cannot perceive. This moment of realization is like a lightning strike, illuminating the hidden corners of the story and adding depth to the narrative.


The hero of this novel is the author. Its heroine a quintessential artistic martyr. The protagonist embodies human transformations, encounters death, stews in it, and with palpable empathy, construes it into art. Through the eyes of the protagonist, we witness the power of art to transform and heal, even in the face of tragedy.


Should an artist live in the world of their art? The story might have elapsed forever, unfolding into silent voids. The book is haunted, beware, but its slow regard of human animals will thrill like any previous susurration from the pen of this American maestro. This question lingers in the air, making us wonder about the relationship between art and life, and the sacrifices that artists must make to create their masterpieces.

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tutisimon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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It has something to do with what we are when we are not playing who we are.

Sometimes time seems to slow down or even stop and we do the same.
We don't stop, no.
But we become vulnerable, uncertain.
Like when you have a high fever or in a dream.
Or in the pain of being abandoned.

It's disturbing.
Between 4 and 5 ☆☆☆☆☆

(The fifth little star is missing, only because it has the specific weight of osmium.)

This passage delves into the complex relationship between our true selves and the masks we wear in different situations. When we step out of the role of presenting a certain image, we are left with our raw and often vulnerable selves. Time seems to behave strangely during these moments, either slowing to a crawl or coming to a standstill. We find ourselves in a state of uncertainty, much like when we are in a fever-induced haze or lost in a dream. The pain of abandonment also strips us down to our core, revealing our true vulnerability. This sense of being exposed and unguarded is deeply disturbing. The rating of between 4 and 5 stars indicates that there is something significant and thought-provoking about this exploration, yet the missing fifth star suggests that there may be an element that is not quite as perfect or complete as it could be, perhaps due to the specific weight of osmium, which adds an interesting and mysterious dimension to the overall piece.

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EmeraldWolfChild
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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The Body Artist is truly a remarkable work.

In the opening description of a couple's breakfast, it sets a tone that is both intimate and thought-provoking.

This book is a deep and thoughtful read, delving into the complex themes of loneliness and the power and capacity of the English language.

It is heavy going at times, requiring the reader to engage deeply with the text and grapple with its profound ideas.

However, this complexity also makes it a great choice for those who are interested in studying literature.

It offers a wealth of insights and interpretations that can be explored and analyzed.

While it may not be the most轻松的 read, it is definitely one that will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Overall, The Body Artist is a must-read for anyone who is looking for a challenging and rewarding literary experience.
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pomopomo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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The Body Artist commences with an extremely ordinary scene of a married couple within a kitchen, engaged in the act of preparing breakfast. The husband, a film director, and the wife, an artist, go about their morning routine.

Every single action is magnified, with a meticulous description of their actions, words, and the entire process of the morning's activities.

It is overly exacting, as the day-to-day and the trivial are dramatized to emphasize the tragedy that is soon to unfold. Subsequent to the husband's suicide, the artist is submerged in grief: a grief of detachment, a sunken despair that distorts reality.

This is a brief read, consisting of just over 130 pages, and is replete with DeLillo's trademark interrogation into what constitutes our humanity and how the boundaries between our numerous realities are, in fact, astonishingly thin. It makes the reader ponder deeply about the nature of human existence and the fragility of our perceived worlds.
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Faeverily
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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When the early Japanese constructed their language, they blended all the shades of blue and green to concoct a single, homogenized term - ''ao'' (青).

Even today, the Japanese refer to specific vegetation, apples and vegetables as ''ao'' (such as blue apples, blue leaf, blue grass). As someone who always took pride in her understanding of the words, I felt betrayed at this contrived attempt to synthesize the human experience of all the vastly different shades of colours into a single, bare word - 'ao'.

No, it isn't an anomaly - there are far more subtle yet fierce ways that our language has failed us. While the reader in me dismays in our incompetence, the human in me corroborates the hidden fact that not everything can be encapsulated in writing.

There are emotions that can't ever be justified on paper. I don’t have the words to explain the moment I first held my dog, a mass of tangled fur and bones and fleas, his brown eyes impossibly wide and tiny mouth opened in a screech of anguish. Or how it felt to walk out into the screeching sunlight after my last exam, letting go of years of toil that I held tight in my sweaty hands, instead filling it with fear of taking control of my life. Or the smell of home after being away for days.

So we just try, we find vague proxies, approximations of the true emotion, useless stand-in words shoved together, we use emoticons and gifs to encapsulate our emotions. This is what made this book powerful to me. Don Delillo exploring the various shades of grief. While the intensity of grief is reflected in the sentences, there's also a far more consuming interpretation of this emotion that hides in the space between words, sketching everything that a mere dictionary definition can't.

There are ways that our language fails us. And maybe that's okay. This way we can keep throwing words into the chasm of this human experience, not always trying to convey ours, rather giving birth to a new shade every time we let someone else touch it.
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shintai88
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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The Body Artist is an engaging and thought-provoking rumination. However, my one piece of advice is this: make sure you are in the right frame of mind for this particular work. It is not your average novel, as there is no traditional plot to speak of. Virtually nothing happens in a conventional sense.

Nevertheless, it has the power to make you think deeply. It compels you to ponder the nature of identity and what truly defines us as individuals. In fact, The Body Artist is more of a parable than a typical novel.

The two main characters, Lauren, a "body artist" who transforms her own body into a state of nothingness, a blank canvas, and an odd man she discovers living in her home who can imitate other people's voices with uncanny precision but has no voice of his own, are fascinating due to their strange similarities.

Despite the lack of a traditional narrative arc, DeLillo's writing is simply marvelous. If you are in the mood for something experimental and are willing to explore the deeper recesses of the human psyche, then give this one a try.

By; Elizabeth Hendry
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