I selected this book from the 1001 books list solely based on its title - "The Body Artist". I must also sheepishly admit that it was part of my strategy of cherry-picking short books from the list in an attempt to cheat my way to a higher number of "read" books. People, don't do this as it can have negative consequences. It's also a good reminder that we should read for enjoyment and not just to fulfill a list, pad numbers, or treat it as an enforced chore. Which is unfortunately what this book became for me.

It initially appealed to me mainly because I spend a significant amount of time dealing with bodies and thinking about the human condition in a non-philosophical way. I'm not a very philosophical person. Despite what the grave digger in Hamlet might lead you to believe, spending your time up to your neck in charnel and pondering the bony faces of the long-departed will not transform you into a thoughtful poet. Instead, it will turn you into a slightly macabre cynic who sees us for what we truly are - mobile worm food that hasn't yet begun to rot.

Anyway, a friend had already cautioned me against reading Don DeLillo, but foolishly, I chose not to listen and instead plunged into the cover of this book. Oh, how I wish I hadn't. Half a day of my life (thankfully, it's a short book) that I can never get back, and it means I'm now officially half a day closer to my inevitable fate of becoming annelid snack-fodder, all while having been disappointed by a load of self-indulgent drivel. The premise is okay, but the sentence structure and stylistic characteristics of the book just aren't to my taste. "Lauren ate her breakfast, or not, it didn't matter." Seriously, Don! They're your characters, so please make up your mind whether or not they performed an action. Otherwise, it just seems lazy.

For those of you who also read this and decided that Don DeLillo had his one and only chance on your bookshelf, don't be disheartened! I recently read "White Noise" and it really endeared me to Don. I'm just about to start reading "Cosmopolis" and have "Underworld" lined up like a menacing, bulky bully on my shelf as well. I'll get back to you once it's finished overwhelming me with its intimidating mass of words.

You don't know how to love those you love until they suddenly disappear. Only then do you understand that you have always maintained a certain distance, even if it is small, from their suffering, that you are stingy with sharing yourself and only rarely opened up about what is in your heart, developing your own network of "I to you, and you to me."

This realization often comes as a shock, as we are so accustomed to our patterns of behavior that we don't even notice them. We think we are being kind or protecting ourselves, but in reality, we are withholding love and connection.

When we lose someone we love, we are forced to face the fact that we could have done more, loved more deeply, and been more present. It is a painful lesson, but one that can also lead to growth and a greater appreciation for the people in our lives.

So, the next time you find yourself holding back, ask yourself why. Are you afraid of getting hurt? Are you too busy with your own life? Or are you simply not aware of how your actions are affecting those around you?

By being more conscious of our behavior and making an effort to love more fully, we can build stronger, more meaningful relationships and avoid the regret that comes with not showing our loved ones how much they truly mean to us.

- What?

Maybe the idea is to think of time differently. Stop time, or stretch it out, or open it up. Make a still life that's living, not painted.

In every instant of our waking lives, we are bombarded with a deluge of sensory information from the world around us. We experience the textures, colors, sounds, smells, and tastes that make up our reality. To make sense of these experiences and share them with others, we rely on language. However, language is a flawed and imperfect tool. It is like a cage that confines our perceptions, reducing the rich and complex tapestry of our experiences to a series of abstract signifiers.

Don DeLillo's brief novel, The Body Artist (2001), explores the limitations of language and the power of experience. Through the character of Lauren Hartke, a body artist who is grieving the loss of her husband, DeLillo takes us on a journey into the inner workings of the human mind and the nature of being.

The novel begins with a seemingly ordinary scene of Hartke having breakfast with her husband, Rey Robles. However, as the scene unfolds, we begin to see the cracks in their relationship and the underlying tensions that will lead to Rey's suicide. The scene is a masterful exercise in stillness, with DeLillo using language to slow down time and reveal the hidden meanings and emotions that lie beneath the surface.

After Rey's death, Hartke descends into a state of grief and loneliness. She withdraws from the world and begins to question the meaning of her life and her art. It is during this time that she discovers Mr. Tuttle, a mysterious figure who may or may not exist. Mr. Tuttle represents the power of language and the ability of words to shape our perceptions of reality. He speaks in a flat, emotionless voice and seems to be removed from time and space.

As Hartke interacts with Mr. Tuttle, she begins to see the world in a new light. She realizes that language is not just a tool for communication, but a force that can create and destroy. She also discovers that her art has the power to transcend language and connect with the deeper emotions and experiences of others.

The Body Artist is a profound and thought-provoking novel that challenges us to think about the nature of time, language, and being. It is a book that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it, making you question the assumptions and beliefs that you hold dear.

Don DeLillo is a master of language and a brilliant storyteller. His writing is spare and elegant, yet充满了power and emotion. The Body Artist is a testament to his talent and a must-read for anyone who is interested in exploring the mysteries of the human mind and the nature of reality.

Overall, I would rate The Body Artist 4.5/5. It is a beautiful and haunting novel that will appeal to fans of literary fiction, philosophy, and psychology. If you are looking for a book that will make you think and feel, then this is the one for you.

Time seems to pass. The world happens, the moments unfold, and you stop to watch a spider attached to its web. There is a bright light, a sense of things precisely delineated, stripes of liquid luminosity on the bay. On a clear and luminous day after a storm, when the tiniest of fallen leaves is pierced by awareness, you know more surely who you are. In the sound of the wind among the pines, the world comes to light, in an irreversible way, and the spider remains attached to the web swaying in the wind.

And you, who are reading this review of mine, say: "Wow!" Only, I must warn you, for me it was truly a big "Yawn!"

Don DeLillo is among the most influential American writers, known for his work focused on analyzing the American lifestyle and neuroses, a continuous love-hate, passion and disillusionment, with a good part of "cosmic" pessimism that often makes his novels without an outlet, without a future for his protagonists.

The story (with a very simple plot) has its protagonists in Rey Robles, a director and poet, and Laurene Hartke, a body artist, happily married. The beginning of the novel describes a peaceful slice of family life. As the narrative unfolds, we discover that the director has committed suicide in his ex-wife's house in New York, and the woman is alone in their Maine home metabolizing the loss. The post-mortem consequences of her partner, experienced deep in her viscera, even reaching the point of interacting with a hallucination that moves inside her house: a deformed man who speaks in a language partly incomprehensible, with a vaguely unreal appearance and contours. She nicknames him Mr. Tuttle, like a high school science teacher of hers. It's as if Mr. Tuttle were the embodiment of her grief itself.

The dialogues are at times minimal, the novel is very intimate, minimalist, with strongly psychological traits and in some points completely surreal; Body Art seems to proceed like a psychological thriller that unfolds between art and pain, all centered on the figure of her and her particular elaboration of grief.

All very beautiful and captivating? Not exactly. For the most part, after the first few pages, a certain boredom sets in and if it weren't for DeLillo's skillful writing, I would tear apart this short novel in a few lines. I found the very first part of the story fascinating, that slice of family life so well drawn, around a kitchen table for an everyday breakfast. Then I started, little by little, to "detach" myself from the pages, until the appearance of Mr. Tuttle where I lost all contact with the story.

Sincerely, I didn't like it at all and the time I took to finish it shows this, practically a geological era for me. I just couldn't pick it up again every time I put it down and, compounded by a period of tiredness, it also made me flag in my subsequent readings. Wrong book, in the wrong period.

"What did it mean, the first time, a thinking creature looked deeply into another's eyes? Did it take a hundred thousand years before this happened or was it the first thing they did, transcendingly, the thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls?" This profound question is posed in "The Body Artist".

"The Body Artist" is a powerful novelette that delves into pain, delirium, and the temporal current that takes everything away. I had very low expectations for this secondary work of DeLillo, but it ended up surprising me. The prose, of course, is fascinating, and the story unfolds in a minimalist way. This makes each constitutive fact suffocating and effective in the exposition of immediate suffering. It is, perhaps, his most depressing book.

I highly recommend it, especially to read in one night. It will take you on an emotional journey and make you think deeply about the nature of human connection and the inevitability of loss. Whether you are a fan of DeLillo or simply looking for a thought-provoking read, "The Body Artist" is definitely worth your time.

No lie - I truly believe that I black out when reading this.

I will definitely require someone to inform me about what the hell was happening.

Yeah, the metaphor for grief, I sort of get and understand (or perhaps not).

But why did it seem as if I should have snorted a line of coke and then read this book?

I do not recommend this book - nor doing a line of coke.

Maybe my thoughts will change (probably not) after my 9 AM seminar tomorrow.

It's like my mind goes blank while reading this, and I'm left completely confused.

The grief metaphor is a bit of a mystery to me, and I'm not sure if I really get it.

And that strange feeling of needing coke to read it is just so odd.

I'm really not a fan of this book so far, but we'll see if my perspective changes after the seminar.

Maybe then I'll have a better understanding of what the author was trying to convey.

But for now, I'm just left scratching my head and wondering what the heck is going on.

What did Don DeLillo want to tell with this book?

No matter how hard I squeeze my brains, absolutely nothing comes out.

Imagine that you receive as a gift something wrapped in colorful silk paper and with some precious ribbons. Excited, you open it and find several Lego pieces:

- a man, a woman and a set of utensils and ingredients for breakfast;

- a woman doing contortionism;

- a gun and a dead person;

- a house and a car;

- a doll that looks like a boy and that eventually disappears, wrapped in the paper and the ribbons;

- and several other pieces without assembly instructions...

And you, although disappointed and confused, try to put the pieces together into something that makes sense to you. But, powerless, you conclude that you have been given a gift from which you cannot get any benefit.

Is this Art (very modern) and that's why I don't understand?

"A man, standing in the middle of an art gallery, lets another point a firearm at him and shoot him in an arm. This is art. A woman paints pictures with her vagina. This is art. A man and a woman, naked, throw themselves head-on at each other, repeatedly, at an increasingly faster speed. This is art, sex and aggression. A man dressed in bloody women's underwear piles up a huge amount of minced meat. This is art, sex, aggression, cultural criticism and authenticity. A man drives nails into his penis. This is just authenticity."

(Page 105)

In the same way that I don't understand why the artistic construction of the "nails" is not art and the rest already is. If I can understand this small detail perhaps I can assemble the pieces of "The Body as Art"... perhaps...

This is a quiet storm of existential inquiry, a work that distills the essence of time, grief, and identity into a slim volume that refuses to be confined by its brevity.

The story commences with Lauren Hartke, a performance artist, and her husband, Rey Robles, a filmmaker, sharing a morning ritual of coffee and toast in their rented New England home. The simplicity of this moment—the "dribble of coffee," the "toast crumbs on the table"—belies the emotional undercurrents that surface when Rey abruptly departs and later upends things. DeLillo's prowess in making the ordinary extraordinary is fully showcased here, as the house itself appears to soak up Lauren's solitude, its creaks and silences becoming a sort of chorus to her emotions.

Mr. Tuttle, a figure who defies easy categorization, his speech a collage of disjointed phrases and his presence seemingly unmoored from linear time, enters the story. "He was a man in his forties, or fifties, or thirties," DeLillo writes, capturing the character's elusive nature. Mr. Tuttle serves as a catalyst for Lauren's artistic exploration, his fragmented language and enigmatic behavior compelling her to question the boundaries of her own identity. In one remarkable passage, Lauren mimics his speech, her voice transforming into "a kind of echo chamber, a place where time loops and folds back on itself." This interplay between language and selfhood lies at the heart of the novel, as DeLillo delves into how we construct and deconstruct ourselves through the act of communication. The scenes of Lauren rehearsing her performance art are depicted with such exactitude that the reader can almost sense the physicality of her movements, the strain and release of her body as she endeavors to express the ineffable.

DeLillo, often grouped with postmodern luminaries like Pynchon and Gaddis, distinguishes himself here through the novel's intimate scope and emotional resonance. Written in 2001, the book feels uncannily prescient in its exploration of how technology and media fragment our sense of self, yet its themes are timeless, firmly rooted in the universal experience of loss and the search for meaning.

The book's refusal to offer clear resolutions is one of its greatest virtues, inviting the reader to sit with the discomfort of ambiguity. Among its many surprises is how it transmutes the mundane—a half-empty house, a stray comment, a fleeting glance—into something profoundly mysterious.

The central messages revolve around the fluidity of identity and the impossibility of truly knowing another person, or even oneself. As Lauren observes, "You try to take the truth into your hands, and it comes loose."

The book speaks to the universal experience of loss while challenging us to reevaluate how we perceive time, memory, and the boundaries of the self. This one was a little slow for me, but DeLillo's writing, as always, is a wonder of economy and precision, each sentence a meticulously calibrated instrument of revelation.

The death of a beloved person.

His presence that remains in the rooms he has inhabited, in the objects he has touched, in the cigarette smoke he has exhaled.

Tomorrow as a salvific thought.

A reassuring routine.

Programming to live.

Then hallucinations, ghosts, dreams, desires or yourself.

The collapse of the real dimension.

Everyone sees the contours of feelings in their own way, perceives them in their unique, single, private way; can you really, deeply understand someone else's feeling? How many degrees of perception are required.

Awareness.

Escape route.

Confusion: reality and dream, reality and hope.

"...and it was night, always suddenly."

Represent to themselves a dimension that reconciles the voids and the fullness, lie to their wounded mind, draw a credible film.

Only acts of memory remain.

Oei.

It is a pretentious and self-involved piece of work. Is it a story? A slice-of-life? Or perhaps experimental writing?

This is a very short novel that might be read as a love story, yet that would be tragic (and the pun is intended) because I never cared for the protagonist from the very beginning.

So, what is the driving force behind this book? Probably the hallucinations or the crazy person who is an occasional psychic. Either way, it is a thin line that holds this book together.

The story seems to aim for magical realism but falls far short of the mark. The unexplained phenomenon is too feeble to suspend one's disbelief, resulting in an awkward book.

Overall, it is a weak story lacking emotional depth, with only occasionally beautiful sentences. It fails to engage the reader on a deeper level and leaves one with a sense of dissatisfaction.

Perhaps with more development and a stronger central concept, this could have been a more compelling read. As it stands, however, it is a disappointment.

A very strange book indeed. I find myself at a loss when it comes to reviewing it.

The story begins with a couple, Rey, an old filmmaker, and Lauren, a body artist, who have recently tied the knot and are having breakfast at home. This scene is both interesting and confusing, filled with a sense of strangeness. They engage in conversation, yet neither truly listens to the other. They seem to want to talk more, but lack the words. Lauren is captivated by the birds that visit them and pays little attention to what Rey says. She mentions a strange sound in the house, as if there is another person lurking within. They have already searched the home thoroughly but found no one.

After breakfast, Rey goes to his ex-wife's apartment and commits suicide!

Are we missing something?

A few days later, Lauren discovers someone in the house. It is a strange boy or man whose age she cannot determine. He only speaks parts of the conversation she had with Rey. She names him Mr. Tuttle. She takes care of him, feeds him, and in return, he tells her more of the conversation as if it is being played from a recording device.

This book reminds me a great deal of Wylding Hall, although I'm not entirely sure why. Towards the end, I wonder if Tuttle is Lauren's way of coping with the grief of losing her husband, especially since she didn't listen to his words during breakfast. I'm still left confused by this book and will definitely have to read it again in the near future.

Time is an essential element that shapes our lives and experiences. It is the only narrative that truly matters.

Time extends the events that occur, allowing us to fully understand and appreciate their significance. It gives us the opportunity to experience both suffering and the end of suffering, which in turn helps us to grow and learn.

Moreover, time enables us to see death, a reality that we often try to avoid or ignore. However, by facing death through the passage of time, we are also able to come to terms with it and move on.

In conclusion, time is a powerful force that governs our lives and provides us with the means to make sense of the world around us. As the quote by Italo Calvino suggests, "Il tempo è la sola narrazione che conta. Estende gli eventi e rende possibile la sofferenza e la fine della sofferenza, ci fa vedere la morte e ce la fa dimenticare." We must learn to respect and cherish time, for it is the only thing that truly lasts.

"Time is the only narrative that counts. It extends events and makes possible suffering and the end of suffering, it makes us see death and makes us forget it."