The Body Artist: A Novel

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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!!!!!!!!!!!!