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Summary: To review or not to review or perhaps
Review: The book is simultaneously a masterpiece and unfulfilling. DeLillo is a master in his use of language - the sentence can be jarring, incomplete, ambiguous, meandering as the plot line requires. An example: "She moved past the landing and turned into the hall, feeling whatever she felt, exposed, open, something you could call unlayered mayer, it that means anything, and she was aware of the world in every step." While I frequent enjoy movels specifically because of their use of language, I found DeLillo's writing jarring - there were sentences I had to reread in order to get the sense of them. I prefer to reread a sentence for the sensual pleasure of the words.Similarly, I was both impressed and uneasy about his building of character. He does a splendid job of rooting the body artist in the physical, with an awareness of the physical that had, for me, an almost Zen-like quantity. This was used to advantage as her experiences after her husband's suicide lead to fluid boundaries of time, space, personhood, reality ... However, in the first chapter which sets up the story I found the discrepancy between her semi-awareness of thought and her physical rootedness created a character out of focus. Nonetheless, while I've not been made a fan of DeLillo, anyone interested in the use of language in contemporary novels should read something by him - and this volume is an excellent choice.
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Summary: A HAUNTING NOVELLA ABOUT THE SHATTERING EFFECTS OF DEATH
Review: This is not an easy novel, and don't let its length (a mere 124 pages) let you think otherwise. The plot is anything but usual. After a young artist's husband commits suicide, she resumes her life only to one day discover a strange person sitting on a bed in an unused room, an otherworldly man-child who speaks in cryptic utterances that lack context and syntax. She assumes that he suffers from autism and plans to notify authorities; but changes her mind after hearing him repeat, word for word, a conversation she had with her husband on the day of his death. Wow. Who is this quaint stranger -- unwilling time traveler? Is our protagonist no more than a desperate woman whose grief and isolation have made her delusional? At first I was somewhat frustrated by these questions, but found myself haunted by the layered meanings. When it was not the prose that had me thinking, I was smitten with DeLillo's fascinatingly poetic writing style. He weaves such a riveting tapestry of words to delve into the emotional minutiae of his characters that he not only captivates our sympathetic attention he has us thinking like we were the ones he was talking about. I highly recommend this effortlessly engrossing tale if you have a taste for offbeat but thought-provoking literature.
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Summary: Delillo double-bogey
Review: This is not meant to be helpful; rather it's meant to express my distaste for this Delillo offering. The Body Artist is one of the most artsy, pretentious novels I've ever read.
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Summary: An intoxicating expression of abrupt loss of love
Review: This seems to be a year when we are facing our mortality with writers and Don DeLillo's "The Body Artist" is a surprise phenomenon. Never thought this gifted writer could step away from his intricately substantiated chronicles of Americana and be so pensive. Many readers are complaining that this book is obtuse, that it goes nowhere, that it is about nothing. And if you expect a rapid read of a short novella then those criticisms might be understood. But open that carefully locked door that guards your psyche and I think you will find that the writing of this book is a little miracle. DeLillo presents us with a character's mind-wanderings that explore the black hole that occurs when someone we love is suddenly dead, gone, not here. It is not difficult to travel along the road of stream of consciouness, repeated phrases, specters, longed for reincarnations, ache for touch, for holding and being held, for hearing words that were so taken for granted as part of everyday conversation that they just keep surfacing; it just takes some time. Making his main character a body artist suggests that it is the artist who can best express this void, drawing on the unused synapses of our brain to suggest explanations for the unexplainable. Is there a real 'house guest" after Rey's suicide, or is this preoccupation with a corporal form another mode of communication with Rey's absence? Do we know love unless we lose it? Life goes on, grows routine. An unexpected trauma (is it our fault?, do we assume guilt because we can't understand?) explodes our globe of existence, and abruptly life's routine dissolves, leaving Nothingness in its wake until we sort it out. I think this is a brilliant book; I've read it three times now in one day, and I'm still growing from it and into it. DeLillo has given us the opposite of his usual documented historically edged books and has done it surpassingly well. WHAT A JOURNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Summary: Dellilo Extraordinaire!
Review: While I would say I am a fan of Dellilo's work, I would not classify myself as an afficionado. Of his twelve novels, this is the 5th one I have read. However, in comparison to the other 4, this one showed a degree of advancement and growth in Dellilo's writing style that heretofore just did not exist. In "The Body Artist" Dellilo manages in a short 123 pages, to get across the most intense and complex images of life after death of a loved spouse in a most unusual setting. The book often felt 'Barthelme-like' in its use of phrases and descriptive clauses to create vivid imagery of mental processes. In a complete reversal from what was almost unbearable verbosity in "Underworld", in this book, Dellilo delivers thousands of pages of information in just a short book, which could almost be called a Novella, except for the power of the message conveyed by Dellilo. While I hesitate to give this book a full 5 star rating, I would say that the book is the first one of Dellilo's efforts that is truly on at least the edge of true literature. I highly recommend it!
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