A book is evidence of the hidden power of language. That is, until about one-third of the way through reading, you don't understand a thing, and you get frustrated, but overall, it leaves a very strong aftertaste. Many parts are in a dialogical style at the beginning.

The writing of Don DeLillo is really not for reading but for meditation =))))) Seriously, one can write something extraordinary that has a great impact on the ordinary genre like this.

To be honest, the story is about the life of a woman in the last few days before her husband commits suicide and the days after that. Each event in this period seems to be a meditation case (but of course not a real case because its purpose can be clearly explained), all of which create a unique atmosphere of loneliness, the path to the essence of life as well as each individual. A path that is very similar to meditation.

A book of high value but difficult to grasp.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo is a rather unique work. It's sometimes called a novel and sometimes a novella, but I don't think strict classification is necessary. The story follows a young woman, the third wife of a man who has committed suicide. She is much younger than him, and we journey with her as she copes with death and loneliness.

In my view, this book is quite peculiar. It's narrated from both the second and third person perspectives. The use of the second person at the beginnings of some chapters is rare and I didn't fully grasp its purpose. Maybe a reread will help me catch those details. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Don DeLillo masterfully uses time as a "poetic figure", intertwining the past, present, and future to create a sense of both a single moment and infinity. This adds a great deal of mystique to the character of Mr. Tuttle and to the entire book. However, I didn't really bond with the book or its characters. The pacing is very fast, and although it delves deep into the psyche, it feels distant and out of reach.

The ending is quite charming, despite leaving me with more questions than I started with. It's peculiar and weird in a good way. Overall, this wasn't an amazing reading experience, but it wasn't unenjoyable either. It's poetic and full of artistic elements that evoke emotions, but there's very little plot. If you prefer plot-driven stories, you might want to skip this one. But if you're in the mood for some lovely poetic nonsense, this could be the book for you.

  The Body Artist

Everything that its immediate predecessor Underworld is not, and accordingly demonstrative in conjunction therewith of the author’s not inconsiderable range.

It opens with a conceptual quotation of To the Lighthouse regarding the death of a spouse. Woolf’s scene is my all-time favorite in world literature. The handling here is structurally identical. However, whereas Woolf does not examine the effects, preferring a quick, dreadful textual locus, this novel focuses clearly on the effects. So, it's kickass, as one could do much worse than attempting to gloss Woolf. (The protagonist desires to be “alone by the sea” (50), incidentally.)

Some interpretations consider this to be a ghost story or the narrative of a squatter. That’s all fine, but those readings don't cohere with the protagonist, whose art “inhabited the bodies” (111) of others, a “solitary otherness that becomes familiar (111-12)—“a body artist who tries to shake off the body—hers anyway” (106). She has “vanity” in its etymological sense of “emptiness” (id.) and is “always in the process of becoming another or exploring some root identity” (107). For instance, “part of her knowledge of [her husband’s] body” included “the smell of tobacco,” “the aura of the man, a residue of smoke and unbroken habit” (21). Standard DeLillo narration that juxtaposes bizarre marriage to horrific trauma. After the trauma, the protagonist’s residence is inhabited by the seeming ghost aforesaid. After hearing rats-in-walls sounds, she “found him the next day” and “felt her way back in time to the earlier indications that there was someone in the house and she arrived at this instant, unerringly, with her perceptions all sorted and endorsed” (43).

The home invader “was always as if. He did this or that as if” (47), a sort of radical contingency.

He came into the room then, edgingly, in his self-winding way, as if, as if. She watched him try to adapt his frame to a wing chair and allowed herself a certain measure of relief, a kind of body lightness that disengaged her dreamily from the stolid woman with the book. (80)

The guy’s “future is unnamed,” and he is distemporalized, “simultaneous, somehow, with the present” (79). Perhaps he is “a piece of found art” (83)?

Lacking perhaps his own substance, the dude is some sort of representation.

It wasn’t outright impersonation but she heard elements of her voice, the clipped delivery, the slight buzz deep in the throat, her pitch, her sound, and how difficult at first, unearthly almost, to detect her own voice coming from someone else, from him (52)

This is a sort of undecidability that is typical for the protagonist. However,

In sleep [husband] was no more unknowable than anyone else. Look. The shrouded body feebly beating. This is what you feel, looking at the hushed and vulnerable body, almost anyone’s, or you lie next to your husband after you’ve made love and breathe the heat of his merciless dreams and wonder who he is, tenderly ponder the truth you’ll never know, because this is the secret that sleep protects in its neural depths, in its stages, layers and folds. (56)

She is in fact not even self-identical, seeing “her face in the bathroom mirror and tried to understand why it looked different from the same face downstairs” (65). At one point, her dislocation is total: “she tries to pull him down to the floor with her, stop him, keep him here, or crawls up onto him or into him, dissolving, or only lies prone and sobs unstoppably, being watched by herself from above” (90).

The protagonist experiences some sort of distemporalization.

at the backs of her hands, fingers stretched, looking and thinking, recalling moments with [husband], not moments exactly but times, or moments flowing into composite time, an erotic of see and touch (51)

In her act, as it happens, she “wanted her audience to feel time go by, viscerally, even painfully” (106).

The last of her bodies, the naked man, is stripped of recognizable language and culture. He moves in a curious manner, as if in a dark room, only more slowly and gesturally. He wants to tell us something. His voice is audible, intermittently, on tape (109)

As much of this is descriptive of how the interloper acts, it's fairly plain that the guy is not a separate character, but rather her inhabiting a role as rehearsal for her performance. And in so inhabiting, she propounds some sort of represented identity, a diremption from her own. I'm reasonably certain that what begins in the reader's perspective as a ghost story/home invasion transforms radically by means of this schwerpunkt--which is exactly what a novella is supposed to do, formally. Is this then the metatextualist thesis for how writing works?

Other things of interest, surely—the normal roll call of the author’s cool observations on late capitalist society and whatnot. There is a spectre of later Falling Man here, both with figures related to falling/sliding/&c., but also the performance artist thematic.

Recommended for bodies shedding space, readers placed in a set of counter-surroundings of simultaneous insides and outsides, and those gone upstairs and dropped into a night of tossing sensation, drifts of sex, confession and pale sleep, confession as belief in each other, not unburdenings of guilt but avowals of belief.

It is admirable the capacity that DeLillo has to make the reader's interior vibrate. With his precise prose, as if it were a scalpel, he clearly shows us some of the things in daily life that we know exist but cannot explain in words, and that he describes in a dazzling way. I only know one other writer capable of doing the same, and that is David Foster Wallace.

It's not that I have read many books by DeLillo. In fact, I am just starting to get to know him, and not everything he writes has convinced me yet. I have his most important works pending and I hope I will like them much more. The thing is, with DeLillo I have a problem. His first chapters are so extraordinary that then I expect the same from the central part of the work, and I am disappointed when I don't find it. That said, in the final chapter I always rediscover the genius of the beginning. And the development of the novel is not bad. In fact, you come across brilliant moments, but I find it too convoluted, like a puzzle of which only he has the sample to guide himself, leaving you, the poor reader, blind.

The story of 'Body Art' begins with a couple, Lauren and Rey, doing the typical things that are done during breakfast. And DeLillo tells us this in an impressive and detailed way, almost in a minimalist way. While they continue with the paraphernalia of each morning, they have a conversation in which a mystery is hinted at. Although more than a conversation, it seems that each one is thinking about their own affairs, hardly paying attention to the other. After this scene, we learn of a decisive fact for Lauren's life. Subsequently, something will happen to her that will again disrupt her world and leave you with a nagging feeling about what is really happening. And precisely here is where I think the story is weakest.

But this is no obstacle to not reading this novel, full of brilliant moments and meanings. DeLillo always has something to tell, and that's why I find it interesting.

Highlights: Bereavement, grief, introspection, expression via art

My first encounter with DeLillo's work was a unique experience. It was slow-paced, filled with bitterness and poignancy, yet strangely soothing, much like a perfect blend of scotch.

The story delves into the theme of loss and how one copes with the sudden suicide of a life partner. It explores solitude, delirium, and thoughts that are expressed in an inside-out manner.

I initially wondered about the significance of the title "The Body Artist." I thought that any other profession or character could have potentially led to a similar result. However, by the last 20 or so pages, its prominence and impact became crystal clear.

Recommended: For those who have a penchant for deep and artistic works. It features an experimental and abstract form of narration.

Skip if you are more inclined towards plot-centric reading.

This is the third Don DiLillo book that I’ve read.

I read White Noise in college, just like everyone else. I thought it was a truly modern classic.

Then, in graduate school, I read Libra in a 500-level literature class. I thought it was terrible, maybe because of the two heartbreaking three-hour sessions my classmates spent tearing the book apart.

I have mixed feelings about The Body Artist. It’s a slim book about a performance artist, Lauren, who is grieving for her late husband. A strange man appears in her house and then disappears.

On the positive side, the book is beautifully written, more like a prose poem. DiLillo has a weird ability to capture how people are alone with themselves. He also does a good job playing with time and perception. The short second-person vignettes add to the feel of a prose poem.

However, the book has some issues. DiLillo can be heavy-handed with the themes. Sometimes it feels like he’s shouting them at us. The plot is also very vague and stylized, and I often didn’t understand what was happening. Even the major reviews contradict each other.

Either way, DiLillo can write a sentence and create an atmosphere. I’ve heard I should read Underworld before I judge any further.

A good book is truly a remarkable thing. It has the power to transport us to different worlds, introduce us to unique characters, and make us feel a wide range of emotions.

This particular book is not only good but also beautiful and poetic. The language used within its pages is like a gentle breeze that caresses our souls. Each sentence is crafted with such care and precision that it feels like a work of art.

The author's ability to paint vivid pictures in our minds through words is truly astonishing. We can almost see the landscapes, feel the emotions of the characters, and experience the story as if it were happening right before our eyes.

Reading this book is like taking a journey through a magical land, where every word is a treasure waiting to be discovered. It is a book that will stay with us long after we have turned the last page, leaving us with a sense of wonder and inspiration.

Hmm. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed.

After the truly wonderful "Cosmopolis", this one just seemed rather second-rate.

However, it is still DeLillo, and that counts for something.

This was my second novel written by him, and while it wasn't terrible, it didn't quite reach the heights I was hoping for.

I gave it a rating of 3.6 stars, but I might change it to 3 stars after some more thought.

Meh.

Lets see if "Point Omega" is better.

Maybe that one will be able to recapture the magic that made "Cosmopolis" so great.

Until then, I'll just have to keep reading and hoping for the best from this talented author.

Confusion can be a state that leaves us feeling lost and不知所措. It often arises when we are faced with complex situations or decisions that seem to have no clear answers.

We may find ourselves second-guessing our choices, questioning our beliefs, and feeling a sense of uncertainty about the future.

However, confusion can also be a catalyst for growth and learning. It can force us to step out of our comfort zones, explore new ideas, and expand our perspectives.

By embracing confusion and approaching it with an open mind, we can gain valuable insights and discover new solutions that we may not have otherwise considered.

So, the next time you find yourself in a state of confusion, don't be afraid. Instead, use it as an opportunity to learn and grow, and trust that clarity will eventually emerge.

A minimalistic, intimate, and slightly odd perspective is offered on Lauren's grieving process. After her husband commits suicide, she returns to their home on the coast of New England to be alone. However, she discovers a strange man hiding in one of the rooms. But just who is he and how long has he been there?

This narrative reads like a modern ghost story and a meditation on time, with a profound sense of isolation from the rest of the living. There is an eerie feeling that lingers over everything, keeping the otherwise limited story above average. As a fan of DeLillo, this is perhaps his least accessible work. It is best read in one sitting to fully immerse oneself in its strange and atmospheric world.

The story seems to explore themes of loss, grief, and the unknown, leaving the reader with more questions than answers. The presence of the strange man adds an element of mystery and unease, making it difficult to predict what will happen next.

Overall, it is a thought-provoking and somewhat unsettling piece that will stay with the reader long after they have finished reading.

First Encounter with Délilo.

Intoxicating writing, mature and very profound, with a melancholic and intensely psychological disposition.

The experiences of a woman after the sudden death of her husband. Relatively simple as a theme, but the way of writing and storytelling is unique, and the plot unfolds in a more modern pattern.

I liked it. It put me in its atmosphere (although it was a bit confusing at the beginning), and I was captivated by the unique flow of the story.

Délilo's work has a certain charm that draws the reader in and makes them want to explore more. The detailed descriptions and the complex emotions of the characters add depth and authenticity to the story.

Overall, it was a great reading experience that left a lasting impression on me. I look forward to reading more of Délilo's works in the future.

Lauren Hartke, an avant-garde performance artist, rents a large home in a Finnish town with her husband, Rey, a surrealist film-maker.

In the opening chapter, Rey wants to tell Lauren something. "I want to say something but what," he says. She interrupts him, asking distractedly, "What?" Then she offers him orange juice. He tries to tell her about the house, but she notices a hair in her mouth and wonders whose it is. Rey asks if she had a pet dog in her childhood, and she wonders if he should stop shaving. They bicker about whether to listen to the radio. Finally, she asks what he wanted to tell her, but they are interrupted by the chatter of birds, an indescribable chorus of "b's and r's."

Rey finally broaches the topic of the noise in the house at night. When Lauren wonders if something is living in the house, he changes the subject. She muses that she thought it was Friday all day yesterday, and he wonders where his keys are.

In the next chapter, we learn that Rey has died by suicide. Lauren is lost for words when her friends console her. One day, she discovers a strange man in her house. He is wearing only underpants and speaks in broken sentences. When she says, "You have been here," his first utterance is cryptic: "it is not able." Eerily, he can imitate the voice of her husband.

Lauren begins to take care of the strange man, massaging him, feeding him, and bathing him. He starts to speak more, but always without emotion or the right tempo. His speech is a mimicry of human language, sometimes turning into an esoteric chant.

This is a novel in which language is broken. The characters produce fluent verbiage but never truly communicate. Lauren just wants to hear the voice of her dead husband. It is a bizarre, eery, but poignant novel that explores the power and limitations of language.