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The Body Artist
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.
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
About the author
Don DeLillo
90 books5,948 followersDonald 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."
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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July 4, 2023
‘'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 experiencing the world around us through all our five senses. In order to process and share these experiences, we cage our perceptions up in words—abstract signifiers with an assumed weight of meaning. However, language is frail, fallible and full of holes, delivering us a beast behind bars, a caged animal at the zoo, restless and submissive rather than the wild, raw power of a creature at one in its natural habitat and able to roam free through our senses. Don DeLillo’s brief novel, The Body Artist (2001), brings to life the limitations of language to pinpoint experience and further examines this notion in light of a technology-infused modern society through the frighteningly intense introspective plunge of the grief and loneliness that befalls Lauren Hartke after the death of her husband. DeLillo conducts a quiet symphony of pitch-perfect prose to steal the heart as well as crack the shell of concepts such as time and language and masterfully serves us a delicious platter of the abstract implications that hide within. This is a novel about abstractions in a world of impermanence and a white noise of Being that buzzes like an aging fridge all around us, and a novel about the state of metamorphosis. Through Lauren Hartke, a nearly parasitic being that absorbs the world around her to explore the vicissitudes of life, DeLillo uncrates a haunting and surreal existential discourse on time and how language assesses being, effortlessly encapsulating the alienation and anguish of post-modern humanity in this age of technology.
‘Everything is slow and hazy and drained and it all happens around the word seemed.’
Jacques Derrida wrote that ‘il n'ya pas de hors texte (there is nothing outside the text).’ There are many facets to this statement, namely (and I apologize for bastardizing the ideas of deconstructionism is such shamefully simplistic and faulty manner that does not even probe beneath the surface of the ideas) that authorial intent is overruled by the inherent meaning of words as themselves, and that meaning resides in the rhetorical usage of language with regards to historical context, grammar and vocabulary. Words become a tricky subject that exist in a life beyond our complete control and can only be hoped to be harnessed and rode like a wild stallion across the prairies of pages; words are are method of transporting experience to others and therefore experience must be reigned by language and subjected to its shortcomings of placing an abstract into a signifier. ‘No single word,’ wrote Derrida, ‘ out of context, can by itself ever translate another word perfectly.’ Words are rife with meaning, a tree full with the fruits of connotation, denotation and intention, each specific and unique, yet to perfectly harness our intentions it would require an exhaustive examination of each word to be sure we are ushering the reader to experience the exact same principals of the experience we are trying to imply. It is also important to keep in mind that the word is not the thing, only a signpost pointing towards the thing-in-itself. It is an abstract array of sounds agreed upon as an indentifier. When we say ‘dog’, for example, we don’t paint a clear image of a dog—what kind of dog, what color, or even if we mean dog-like, but mostly just rule out that we don’t mean, say, a cat or a giraffe (once again, forgive the shallow discussion on Derrida’s différance and the examples from Ferdinand de Saussure’s discourses on semiology. I’m painting with broad strokes that can lead to dangerous misinterpretation, but the general idea is important to the understanding of the novel). In The Body Artist, DeLillo highlights the zone where experience and language fail to match up, the feelings that life embodies but language falls short of harnessing. It is a book about ‘seems’, a book about the abstract, the moments unlocked from time and space and plot.
The opening scene is a perfect example of Hartke’s ‘living still life’, a scene that is brilliant on its own and would function flawlessly as a short story if shorn from the remainder of the novel. The scene focuses on Hartke having breakfast at home with her husband, Rey Robles, mere hours before his suicide in the living space of a former wife. The scene is practically still, only several minutes lapsing over the few pages, allowing time to stretch open and reveal all the latent implications and overlooked sensory perceptions to the reader because ‘this is how you live a life even if you don’t know it.’ Practically without realizing it, Hartke is assessing the world around her and processing it through language, from the taste of the breeze to the ‘cardboard orange aroma’ of the orange juice container—and immensely brilliant collection of words that borders on near-nonsense in order to more accurately express how much of our sensory experience defies perfect linguistic explanation. This is further exemplified by smells that escape definition:
Lauren Hartke is herself an avant-garde artist like her husband, an acclaimed surrealist filmmaker. As a ‘body artist’, she examines the flux of life through her art, exemplifying them through artistic and shocking changes in her body, finding inspiration in the world around her.
‘There has to be an imaginary point, a non-place where language intersects with our perceptions of time and space, and he is a stranger at this crossing, without words or bearings.’
Hartke also discovers Mr. Tuttle, who may or may not exist, in the upper levels of her home. He speaks and acts ‘like a man anonymous to himself’, removed from time and place, and is even able to perfectly match her and Rey’s voice and recite their final conversations together. Mr. Tuttle is the pockmarked, teenage state of language, language still forming and taking shape both theoretically and biologically, and emphasized by her naming him after a high school biology teacher. Mr. Tuttle ‘violates the limits of the human’ and seems unstuck from time and space. He is language in a pure sense, not beholden to the constraints of the universe and the clock.
Technology plays a large part in this slim novel, especially with regards to Hartke’s feelings of alienation. Computers and technology give us access to the world at our fingertips, just a click of a button and she is staring at a live feed of a Scandinavian interstate yet still she feels disconnected from people and lonely. There is daily news from around the world to which she can osmose emotion, yet there is still a disconnect¹
‘All plots tend to move deathward,’ DeLillo wrote in his quintessential masterpiece White Noise. Plot and time are imperative here, too, in The Body Artist. ‘You are made out of time. This is the force that tells you who you are. Close your eyes and feel it. It is time that defines you.’ We are strapped to our timeline, finite beings whose story plays out in an orderly, plot-like fashion when seen as a set of points from birth to death; time takes life and ‘[writes] it like a line in fiction.’ Each point is part of an arc of change, and The Body Artist is like a second derivative in math, opening up each individual point in time to view the changes therein. We are constantly in a state of flux, constantly aware of the ticking hands, yet with Mr. Tuttle we see how events can be viewed ‘outside of time’, as events-in-themselves.
If we stopped and slowed down, if we saw our life like a bowl of oranges in an ornate frame, what would we make of our individual moments? The Body Artist asks this question of us, being concerned not with where a plot is heading, but the metamorphosis that ensues along the journey. The final sections, including an editorial review of Lauren Hartke’s performance, tie the themes of language and change together upon the stage and makes them dance beautifully for the reader. Don DeLillo is an author that really knocks it out of the park for me when he is at the top of his game, and there are some fantastic existential quandaries brought to life through perfectly polished and flawlessly fluid sentences. Part ghost story, part linguistic and metaphysical metaphorical dissertation, The Body Artist is a slim powerhouse of ideas that is sure to charm the intellect and send the reader racing for more DeLillo.
4.5/5
‘Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seams of being. It passes through you, making and shaping.’
¹ Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other is an excellent and insightful investigation into the DeLillo-esk implications of a post-modern technology reliant society and how it breeds human alienation. The story goes, according to the story I heard on NPR’s Radiolab, that Turkle fully endorsed technology and social media as an advancement in human interaction until the fateful day that she took her grad students on a field trip to a nursing home to watch the elderly people staying there interact with a ‘hairless seal’ robot that was designed to mimic empathy and respond to emotion. Turkle and her students were horrified, believing these dying people deserved more than simulated empathy and companionship in their twilight hours, and she began to examine life and technology from the other side. A worthwhile and intriguing book.
In every instant of our waking lives we are experiencing the world around us through all our five senses. In order to process and share these experiences, we cage our perceptions up in words—abstract signifiers with an assumed weight of meaning. However, language is frail, fallible and full of holes, delivering us a beast behind bars, a caged animal at the zoo, restless and submissive rather than the wild, raw power of a creature at one in its natural habitat and able to roam free through our senses. Don DeLillo’s brief novel, The Body Artist (2001), brings to life the limitations of language to pinpoint experience and further examines this notion in light of a technology-infused modern society through the frighteningly intense introspective plunge of the grief and loneliness that befalls Lauren Hartke after the death of her husband. DeLillo conducts a quiet symphony of pitch-perfect prose to steal the heart as well as crack the shell of concepts such as time and language and masterfully serves us a delicious platter of the abstract implications that hide within. This is a novel about abstractions in a world of impermanence and a white noise of Being that buzzes like an aging fridge all around us, and a novel about the state of metamorphosis. Through Lauren Hartke, a nearly parasitic being that absorbs the world around her to explore the vicissitudes of life, DeLillo uncrates a haunting and surreal existential discourse on time and how language assesses being, effortlessly encapsulating the alienation and anguish of post-modern humanity in this age of technology.
‘Everything is slow and hazy and drained and it all happens around the word seemed.’
Jacques Derrida wrote that ‘il n'ya pas de hors texte (there is nothing outside the text).’ There are many facets to this statement, namely (and I apologize for bastardizing the ideas of deconstructionism is such shamefully simplistic and faulty manner that does not even probe beneath the surface of the ideas) that authorial intent is overruled by the inherent meaning of words as themselves, and that meaning resides in the rhetorical usage of language with regards to historical context, grammar and vocabulary. Words become a tricky subject that exist in a life beyond our complete control and can only be hoped to be harnessed and rode like a wild stallion across the prairies of pages; words are are method of transporting experience to others and therefore experience must be reigned by language and subjected to its shortcomings of placing an abstract into a signifier. ‘No single word,’ wrote Derrida, ‘ out of context, can by itself ever translate another word perfectly.’ Words are rife with meaning, a tree full with the fruits of connotation, denotation and intention, each specific and unique, yet to perfectly harness our intentions it would require an exhaustive examination of each word to be sure we are ushering the reader to experience the exact same principals of the experience we are trying to imply. It is also important to keep in mind that the word is not the thing, only a signpost pointing towards the thing-in-itself. It is an abstract array of sounds agreed upon as an indentifier. When we say ‘dog’, for example, we don’t paint a clear image of a dog—what kind of dog, what color, or even if we mean dog-like, but mostly just rule out that we don’t mean, say, a cat or a giraffe (once again, forgive the shallow discussion on Derrida’s différance and the examples from Ferdinand de Saussure’s discourses on semiology. I’m painting with broad strokes that can lead to dangerous misinterpretation, but the general idea is important to the understanding of the novel). In The Body Artist, DeLillo highlights the zone where experience and language fail to match up, the feelings that life embodies but language falls short of harnessing. It is a book about ‘seems’, a book about the abstract, the moments unlocked from time and space and plot.
The opening scene is a perfect example of Hartke’s ‘living still life’, a scene that is brilliant on its own and would function flawlessly as a short story if shorn from the remainder of the novel. The scene focuses on Hartke having breakfast at home with her husband, Rey Robles, mere hours before his suicide in the living space of a former wife. The scene is practically still, only several minutes lapsing over the few pages, allowing time to stretch open and reveal all the latent implications and overlooked sensory perceptions to the reader because ‘this is how you live a life even if you don’t know it.’ Practically without realizing it, Hartke is assessing the world around her and processing it through language, from the taste of the breeze to the ‘cardboard orange aroma’ of the orange juice container—and immensely brilliant collection of words that borders on near-nonsense in order to more accurately express how much of our sensory experience defies perfect linguistic explanation. This is further exemplified by smells that escape definition:
Nothing described it. It was pure smell. It was the thing that smell is, apart from all sources...it was as though some, maybe, medieval scholastic had attempted to classify all known odors and had found something that did not fit into his system…Even the sound of birds humming outside the window are obliged to be caged in familiar and examinable language.
The birds broke off the feeder in a wing-whir that was all b’s and r’s, the letter b followed by a series of vibrato r’s. But that wasn’t it at all. That wasn’t anything like it.Try as we might, language is a poor substitute for earnest experience and our state of being is stifled by our need to understand, share and examine it through linguistic policy. Language becomes a stand-in for an idea, but it is more akin to a child playing dress-up as the idea rather than the idea being-in-itself. This is most notable when Hartke mistakes a paint can for a man.
When the car moved past the house...she understood that she was not looking at a seated man but at a paint can placed on a board that was balanced between two chairs. The white and yellow can was his face, the board was his arms and the mind and heart of the man were in the air somewhere already lost in the voice of the news reader on the radio.
Lauren Hartke is herself an avant-garde artist like her husband, an acclaimed surrealist filmmaker. As a ‘body artist’, she examines the flux of life through her art, exemplifying them through artistic and shocking changes in her body, finding inspiration in the world around her.
Things she saw seemed doubtful—not doubtful but ever changing,plunged into metamorphosis, something that is also something else, but what, and what?DeLillo keeps the novel focused on the state of transformation, embodying the idea through Hartke’s alteration after the death of her husband. She is nearly a parasitic creature, drawing her strength from the world and people around her. In the opening scene it is apparent that Rey keeps eye on her health, ensuring she eats and drinks, and that she seems to define herself through his existence. Hartke feeds off him and his care. ‘She was too trim and limber to feel the strain, only echoing Rey, identifying, groaning his groan, but in a manner so seamless and deep it was her discomfort too.’ But what is art but an echo, a reaction, to the world around you. Her art feast upon and is inspired by reality, taking natural life and twisting it into surrealistic performances that unlock the inherent meaning of Being in ways that language cannot do. After his death she stops eating and begins to waste away, literally and figuratively. ‘Now he was smoke, Rey was, the thing in the air, vaporous, drifting into every space sooner or later, unshaped…’ Nothing is permanent in this world and with his impermanence, she too feels her own sense of impermanence. She is removed of her safety net, and is like the ‘life in midair, turning,’ that she sees outside her window, spinning aimlessly without a thread to something firm to ground it. However, it is this entrance into the void that becomes her new inspiration, her knew way of reading the implications of the world and honing her art on the state of flux and metamorphasis she finds in her own life. Through her loneliness and alienation from the world, she discovers her form.
‘There has to be an imaginary point, a non-place where language intersects with our perceptions of time and space, and he is a stranger at this crossing, without words or bearings.’
Hartke also discovers Mr. Tuttle, who may or may not exist, in the upper levels of her home. He speaks and acts ‘like a man anonymous to himself’, removed from time and place, and is even able to perfectly match her and Rey’s voice and recite their final conversations together. Mr. Tuttle is the pockmarked, teenage state of language, language still forming and taking shape both theoretically and biologically, and emphasized by her naming him after a high school biology teacher. Mr. Tuttle ‘violates the limits of the human’ and seems unstuck from time and space. He is language in a pure sense, not beholden to the constraints of the universe and the clock.
There’s a code in the simplest conversation that tells the speakers what’s going on outside the bare acoustics, This was missing when they talked. There was a missing beat...There were no grades of emphasis here and flatness there. She began to understand that their talks had no time sense and that all the references at the unspoken level...was missing hereHis voice comes out flat and without facial expressions to register emotion, paralleled by the synthetic voice on Hartke’s friend’s answering machine. ‘Please / leave / a message / af / ter / the / tone.’ This is an age of technology and advances of artificial intelligence, and it is intriguing to think of a computer, a lifeless machine, interacting in lifelike ways and having to also utilize language the way we do to process and deliver information. Mr. Tuttle is just that, language, devoid of the human emotion and unstuck from time.
Technology plays a large part in this slim novel, especially with regards to Hartke’s feelings of alienation. Computers and technology give us access to the world at our fingertips, just a click of a button and she is staring at a live feed of a Scandinavian interstate yet still she feels disconnected from people and lonely. There is daily news from around the world to which she can osmose emotion, yet there is still a disconnect¹
‘All plots tend to move deathward,’ DeLillo wrote in his quintessential masterpiece White Noise. Plot and time are imperative here, too, in The Body Artist. ‘You are made out of time. This is the force that tells you who you are. Close your eyes and feel it. It is time that defines you.’ We are strapped to our timeline, finite beings whose story plays out in an orderly, plot-like fashion when seen as a set of points from birth to death; time takes life and ‘[writes] it like a line in fiction.’ Each point is part of an arc of change, and The Body Artist is like a second derivative in math, opening up each individual point in time to view the changes therein. We are constantly in a state of flux, constantly aware of the ticking hands, yet with Mr. Tuttle we see how events can be viewed ‘outside of time’, as events-in-themselves.
If we stopped and slowed down, if we saw our life like a bowl of oranges in an ornate frame, what would we make of our individual moments? The Body Artist asks this question of us, being concerned not with where a plot is heading, but the metamorphosis that ensues along the journey. The final sections, including an editorial review of Lauren Hartke’s performance, tie the themes of language and change together upon the stage and makes them dance beautifully for the reader. Don DeLillo is an author that really knocks it out of the park for me when he is at the top of his game, and there are some fantastic existential quandaries brought to life through perfectly polished and flawlessly fluid sentences. Part ghost story, part linguistic and metaphysical metaphorical dissertation, The Body Artist is a slim powerhouse of ideas that is sure to charm the intellect and send the reader racing for more DeLillo.
4.5/5
‘Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seams of being. It passes through you, making and shaping.’
¹ Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other is an excellent and insightful investigation into the DeLillo-esk implications of a post-modern technology reliant society and how it breeds human alienation. The story goes, according to the story I heard on NPR’s Radiolab, that Turkle fully endorsed technology and social media as an advancement in human interaction until the fateful day that she took her grad students on a field trip to a nursing home to watch the elderly people staying there interact with a ‘hairless seal’ robot that was designed to mimic empathy and respond to emotion. Turkle and her students were horrified, believing these dying people deserved more than simulated empathy and companionship in their twilight hours, and she began to examine life and technology from the other side. A worthwhile and intriguing book.
April 25, 2024
Is reality too powerful for you?
link: source
We often find ourselves struggling with a critical and generally heart-wrenching dilemma of finding solace through grief, it is broadly accepted that there is no right way to experience and accept bereavement, for different people react differently to it. We know and understand that we have to move on however, we find it difficult to nudge ourselves over the loss of someone we love as if our own beings get stuck at that moment itself. And why should we move on? Why not let death let us sink into it?
The Body Artist is a careful and immaculate study and portrayal of how death affects those who live. Death, as we know is one of the strangest enigmas of humanity, we have explored it to the details possible; our religious scriptures speak about the place of death and its role in the continuity of life, but, time and again, we find ourselves lingering over the harsh reality of life. It appears that we usually crave grief and death in life, more than happiness and life, sometimes so much that our existence itself becomes a suspended mockery in that eventual event. We may not be doing it willfully as it seems to happen naturally to us, however, our brain certainly plays a trick or two on us.
The story starts with a seemingly mundane scene of a couple trying to have breakfast in an ordinary morning, however, the scene is stretched to its barest details, infusing it with beauty and emotions, so much so that you feel you are witnessing an event of grandeur and liveliness. There is nothing much happening in the story beyond this event, the narrative of the whole story gets suspended around it as if it is the focal point of the entire universe but we know that we are not reading it for actions, we are here for something deeper, something more emotional, something more humane, however tragic it may be.
You are taken aback by the shocking disclosure of the suicide by the husband, Rey, through a media report infused in the narrative. It is a technique quite aptly used by the author, to wake up the reader from the hallucinating, nauseatic effect of the prose and to open his/ her eyes to reality, to accept it. The rest of the story is how the wife, Lauren, copes with her life and being, physically, emotionally, and sexually, or rather how the reader copes with this haunting tale of grief and loss. She seems to be temporally stuck in the gravest accident of her life, her existence could not find the voice and means to express itself. She gets suspended in a timeless, formless limbo after that, though her mind takes strength from the surroundings and carves out a surreal, hypnotic, and eerie world that is unconnected and uninfluenced by this universe.
Bereavement may affect us in really strange ways, some of them are unfathomable to conceive, but that’s how life is- strange and incomprehensible. It is being said that the way we deal with such situations of immense unhappiness, depends upon our upbringing, surroundings, and social conditions. Even then, at times it may affect us in profound, unimaginable ways. Lauren forgets herself, boundaries of her-self, she gets transforms into someone else- something else, merges with art, changes forms and beings. as if part of a universal phenomenon. Art may help people to contain and understand their feelings, our history is filled with a plethora of examples wherein people have made peace with their grief to produce masterpieces of artistic expressions.
link: source
She thought in words sometimes, outright and fully formed. She wasn’t sure when this began to happen, a day or a month ago, because it seemed to have been the case forever.
Lauren takes the plunge into one of the mysterious resorts of humanity, what could it be? Self-rumination, her inner voice, or an apparition or a smart trick by the author. She develops a voice that is devoid of forms, expressions, beings we know of. He is a continuum of consciousness that can’t be divided into this and that, now and then, he is someone or something whose existence doesn’t matter to our world, Lauren thinks he is a manifestation of Rey, though she does not press for details to not to suffer to find out that he is not, as if the consciousness of Rey has been infused into him, but eventually he proves to more than that, he may be a ghost or a creature of some higher dimensions, who may exist simultaneously in past, present and future. Perhaps he experiences another kind of reality, he is defenseless against the truth of our world or probably she has created him out of her consciousness to withstand the truth of the world. The story also touches upon the effect of technology on human existence, the way it affects our alienation, on emotional and psychic levels, to dehumanize and robotize humanity.
Coming and going I am leaving. I will go and come. Leaving has come to me. We all, shall all, will all be left. Because I am here and where. And I will go or not or never. And I have seen what I will see. If I am where I will be. Because nothing comes between me.
As we know, we live in a temporal universe wherein time is the only thing that matters, its role in our existence which is being controlled by time and gets meaning because of it. We are being imparted with a sense of living or moment by time itself, it enables us to endure the most grueling and punishing events of our life. The vigor to come out of death and suffering is bestowed upon us by time. It is said to be the best healer of our life, for it enables us to brave through our condemned existence. The voice, the being, or the apparition, Lauren lives with, threatens our assumptions of sanity, he is unaware of the language we speak, he (or it) violates the very limits of humanity, our expressions, emotions, our language.
Time is not a facility of language; it unfolds into seams of being, for the temporal spaces- past, present, and future- of the universe do not depend upon language. To express ourselves clearly and absolutely, we must encompass an imaginary point where language intersects with our perception of time and space, our universe per se. It highlights the ability or inability of our language to communicate, since language itself may communicate with the inherent meaning in the text and for we always need signifier to put across our essence and perception, still, more often than not, the unintended meaning is understood. And further to investigate if words can communicate themselves, on their own, do they have their own beings? It raises one of the fundamental questions we have been trying to answer since the development of our philosophical discourse and which is that could we really communicate ourselves or convey our feelings effectively, are our communication means and tools are equipped enough to do that?
The inability of our language to communicate forces Lauren to imbibe the voice into herself and find a way to express her grief through her art- the body art by transforming herself into someone else, something else- like an amalgamation of the consciousness of the universe. It is her attempt to become bodiless, formless, and achieve an infinite existence, and how well she has succeeded.
Be nice if I could say this is the drama of men and women versus death. I want to say that but I can’t. It’s too small and secluded and complicated and I can’t and I can’t and I can’t.
The author a basic question through the story and it is- what is reality? Is it as we conceive it, it befalls upon us or something else, something else? Is reality too powerful for us? And are we really capable to assimilate and comprehend reality, in the first place? And how much our myth play part in it? What we absorb as real, does it really happen in the fabric of space-time at that particular instant or we are just reliving a memory, an imagination, or a hallucination. This essentially means that our version of reality depends upon our perception which is limited by our ability to discern things, Jean-Paul Sartre mentioned that We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is. We know that the way we have moved from classical thought to modernism, then to post-modernism, made us truthful to the vagaries and ambiguities of human existence which gives some rays of hope, as we learned to look beyond the illusion of creating something solid and perpetual and to move towards the human condition, even though it means to create something illogical or silly.
link: source
The author really showed his mastery over the art through this book, in a way that he has been able to draw a profound meditation on grief and loss, and at the same time shows us how it is being done. The prose is tightly woven and condensed as if each word has been selected with the careful precision of an artist so that each word may contribute in conveying the exact and intended emotions through the deliberate expression of every word.
Sometimes the reader may have to read the prose of DeLillo more than once and on each such reading, the reader may feel to acquire something new from the text, it is like an old wine that is to savored gradually. It is quite rare for a third-person narrative to emanate the real-life conversations, as, by and large, it is being seen in first-person narratives as in the case of Samuel Beckett and László Krasznahorkai but it can certainly be expected from an author of the caliber of Don DeLillo. We may see the influence of Samuel Beckett in the prose as, like him, DeLillo has pushed the limit of novel or literature per se we may observe in Molloy trilogy and How It Is by Beckett.
Hartke’s work is not self-strutting or self-lacerating. She is acting, always in the process of becoming another or exploring some root identity.
Highly recommended.
4.5/5
link: source
We often find ourselves struggling with a critical and generally heart-wrenching dilemma of finding solace through grief, it is broadly accepted that there is no right way to experience and accept bereavement, for different people react differently to it. We know and understand that we have to move on however, we find it difficult to nudge ourselves over the loss of someone we love as if our own beings get stuck at that moment itself. And why should we move on? Why not let death let us sink into it?
The Body Artist is a careful and immaculate study and portrayal of how death affects those who live. Death, as we know is one of the strangest enigmas of humanity, we have explored it to the details possible; our religious scriptures speak about the place of death and its role in the continuity of life, but, time and again, we find ourselves lingering over the harsh reality of life. It appears that we usually crave grief and death in life, more than happiness and life, sometimes so much that our existence itself becomes a suspended mockery in that eventual event. We may not be doing it willfully as it seems to happen naturally to us, however, our brain certainly plays a trick or two on us.
The story starts with a seemingly mundane scene of a couple trying to have breakfast in an ordinary morning, however, the scene is stretched to its barest details, infusing it with beauty and emotions, so much so that you feel you are witnessing an event of grandeur and liveliness. There is nothing much happening in the story beyond this event, the narrative of the whole story gets suspended around it as if it is the focal point of the entire universe but we know that we are not reading it for actions, we are here for something deeper, something more emotional, something more humane, however tragic it may be.
You are taken aback by the shocking disclosure of the suicide by the husband, Rey, through a media report infused in the narrative. It is a technique quite aptly used by the author, to wake up the reader from the hallucinating, nauseatic effect of the prose and to open his/ her eyes to reality, to accept it. The rest of the story is how the wife, Lauren, copes with her life and being, physically, emotionally, and sexually, or rather how the reader copes with this haunting tale of grief and loss. She seems to be temporally stuck in the gravest accident of her life, her existence could not find the voice and means to express itself. She gets suspended in a timeless, formless limbo after that, though her mind takes strength from the surroundings and carves out a surreal, hypnotic, and eerie world that is unconnected and uninfluenced by this universe.
Bereavement may affect us in really strange ways, some of them are unfathomable to conceive, but that’s how life is- strange and incomprehensible. It is being said that the way we deal with such situations of immense unhappiness, depends upon our upbringing, surroundings, and social conditions. Even then, at times it may affect us in profound, unimaginable ways. Lauren forgets herself, boundaries of her-self, she gets transforms into someone else- something else, merges with art, changes forms and beings. as if part of a universal phenomenon. Art may help people to contain and understand their feelings, our history is filled with a plethora of examples wherein people have made peace with their grief to produce masterpieces of artistic expressions.
link: source
She thought in words sometimes, outright and fully formed. She wasn’t sure when this began to happen, a day or a month ago, because it seemed to have been the case forever.
Lauren takes the plunge into one of the mysterious resorts of humanity, what could it be? Self-rumination, her inner voice, or an apparition or a smart trick by the author. She develops a voice that is devoid of forms, expressions, beings we know of. He is a continuum of consciousness that can’t be divided into this and that, now and then, he is someone or something whose existence doesn’t matter to our world, Lauren thinks he is a manifestation of Rey, though she does not press for details to not to suffer to find out that he is not, as if the consciousness of Rey has been infused into him, but eventually he proves to more than that, he may be a ghost or a creature of some higher dimensions, who may exist simultaneously in past, present and future. Perhaps he experiences another kind of reality, he is defenseless against the truth of our world or probably she has created him out of her consciousness to withstand the truth of the world. The story also touches upon the effect of technology on human existence, the way it affects our alienation, on emotional and psychic levels, to dehumanize and robotize humanity.
Coming and going I am leaving. I will go and come. Leaving has come to me. We all, shall all, will all be left. Because I am here and where. And I will go or not or never. And I have seen what I will see. If I am where I will be. Because nothing comes between me.
As we know, we live in a temporal universe wherein time is the only thing that matters, its role in our existence which is being controlled by time and gets meaning because of it. We are being imparted with a sense of living or moment by time itself, it enables us to endure the most grueling and punishing events of our life. The vigor to come out of death and suffering is bestowed upon us by time. It is said to be the best healer of our life, for it enables us to brave through our condemned existence. The voice, the being, or the apparition, Lauren lives with, threatens our assumptions of sanity, he is unaware of the language we speak, he (or it) violates the very limits of humanity, our expressions, emotions, our language.
Time is not a facility of language; it unfolds into seams of being, for the temporal spaces- past, present, and future- of the universe do not depend upon language. To express ourselves clearly and absolutely, we must encompass an imaginary point where language intersects with our perception of time and space, our universe per se. It highlights the ability or inability of our language to communicate, since language itself may communicate with the inherent meaning in the text and for we always need signifier to put across our essence and perception, still, more often than not, the unintended meaning is understood. And further to investigate if words can communicate themselves, on their own, do they have their own beings? It raises one of the fundamental questions we have been trying to answer since the development of our philosophical discourse and which is that could we really communicate ourselves or convey our feelings effectively, are our communication means and tools are equipped enough to do that?
The inability of our language to communicate forces Lauren to imbibe the voice into herself and find a way to express her grief through her art- the body art by transforming herself into someone else, something else- like an amalgamation of the consciousness of the universe. It is her attempt to become bodiless, formless, and achieve an infinite existence, and how well she has succeeded.
Be nice if I could say this is the drama of men and women versus death. I want to say that but I can’t. It’s too small and secluded and complicated and I can’t and I can’t and I can’t.
The author a basic question through the story and it is- what is reality? Is it as we conceive it, it befalls upon us or something else, something else? Is reality too powerful for us? And are we really capable to assimilate and comprehend reality, in the first place? And how much our myth play part in it? What we absorb as real, does it really happen in the fabric of space-time at that particular instant or we are just reliving a memory, an imagination, or a hallucination. This essentially means that our version of reality depends upon our perception which is limited by our ability to discern things, Jean-Paul Sartre mentioned that We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is. We know that the way we have moved from classical thought to modernism, then to post-modernism, made us truthful to the vagaries and ambiguities of human existence which gives some rays of hope, as we learned to look beyond the illusion of creating something solid and perpetual and to move towards the human condition, even though it means to create something illogical or silly.
link: source
The author really showed his mastery over the art through this book, in a way that he has been able to draw a profound meditation on grief and loss, and at the same time shows us how it is being done. The prose is tightly woven and condensed as if each word has been selected with the careful precision of an artist so that each word may contribute in conveying the exact and intended emotions through the deliberate expression of every word.
Sometimes the reader may have to read the prose of DeLillo more than once and on each such reading, the reader may feel to acquire something new from the text, it is like an old wine that is to savored gradually. It is quite rare for a third-person narrative to emanate the real-life conversations, as, by and large, it is being seen in first-person narratives as in the case of Samuel Beckett and László Krasznahorkai but it can certainly be expected from an author of the caliber of Don DeLillo. We may see the influence of Samuel Beckett in the prose as, like him, DeLillo has pushed the limit of novel or literature per se we may observe in Molloy trilogy and How It Is by Beckett.
Hartke’s work is not self-strutting or self-lacerating. She is acting, always in the process of becoming another or exploring some root identity.
Highly recommended.
4.5/5
October 2, 2022
"There's something about the wind. It strips you of assurances, working into you, continuous, making you feel the hidden thinness of everything around you, all the solid stuff of a hundred undertakings - the barest makeshift flimsy."
Grief can do that too. The Body Artist begins with a domestic breakfast scene. Husband and wife talking at cross purposes. The wife has no inkling this is the last time she will ever see her husband, that he will be dead in a few hours. In this novel, a kind of ghost story, DeLillo strips everything down, pares everything back, scrubs everything down. Just as Lauren, the grieving wife, has to learn how to breathe again, it's like DeLillo is learning how to write again. The remote house Laura lives in does not belong to her. After a while she discovers she is not alone.
The Body Artist is a bit too hit and miss for me to give it a fanfare of praise. But no living writer writes better sentences than DeLillo. Here's the opening paragraph:
Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running lustre on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.
Grief can do that too. The Body Artist begins with a domestic breakfast scene. Husband and wife talking at cross purposes. The wife has no inkling this is the last time she will ever see her husband, that he will be dead in a few hours. In this novel, a kind of ghost story, DeLillo strips everything down, pares everything back, scrubs everything down. Just as Lauren, the grieving wife, has to learn how to breathe again, it's like DeLillo is learning how to write again. The remote house Laura lives in does not belong to her. After a while she discovers she is not alone.
The Body Artist is a bit too hit and miss for me to give it a fanfare of praise. But no living writer writes better sentences than DeLillo. Here's the opening paragraph:
Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running lustre on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.
Shelved as 'reviews-of-books-i-didnt-read'
October 8, 2017THERE'S 1000 STORIES IN THE CITY OF GOODREADS - THIS IS ONE OF THEM - Yes, Another Dreadful Reviewer/Author Encounter
I surfaced into consciousness unwillingly like a resurrecting Jesus with too much alimony to pay. A slap to the chin and I remembered whose cleancut chiselled features were going to be framing the next supercilious question.
"Feeling better, Mr Bryant?" Yes, of course. It was The Don. But I wasn't going to go quietly.
"Not really, you post-modern gargoyle of unmeaning. You can take your silvery convolutions of ungrammatical feverdreams and shove them where the sun has never shone in a cavern measureless to man down to a sunless sea, O Felchmeister of the English tongue."
Crack. That was my head bouncing off the dingy walls of whatever foul rag and bone shop DeLillo had me banged me up in.
"Less of your mouth, and more of mine," he sneered.
I felt two pairs of strong arms grip me from each side. I caught a glimpse of DeLillo's vile acolytes. Just as I guessed. Steve Erickson on one side and yep, the notorious transvestite Bret Easton Ellis (“Bretsy” to his friends, of which there aren’t any) on the other. They were giggling like schoolgirls.
“Oooh, the things he said about me, and in public!”
“Oooh, let’s do page 149 and then page 301!”
"You won't get away with this," I grunted.
"We will, you know, we aren't in the YA business and we're not going to blog about this!" hissed Bretsy.
The Don told them to shut up and they squeaked into silence. It was pretty clear to me that there were American postmodern novelists and there was The Don. His very eyebrow had been reviewed ecstatically in the NYRB more times than all the others' entire sets of genitalia. And they knew it. And now he was heating up a pair of ordinary garden secateurs over a pile of remaindered early Franzen novels ( the ones before Oprah spotted him).
“Snip snip, Mr Bryant. One snip for every nasty little thing you said about me in your nasty reviews, and one more for encouraging your friends to mock me in surrealistic boxing match fantasies, and a final little snip for my two good buddies who have been really quite hurt by the dreadful things you say. I suppose you wish us all to write like your precious but sadly dead Raymond Carver? Hmm? ‘And then this sad alcoholic fell over and then this other sad alcoholic went shopping for a mop. The end.’ Is that it? That’s how you want us all to write?”
I was about to demolish his crude travesties of my crude travesties of his and his good buddies’ rancid fictions – I had vowed wild horses wouldn’t get me to remind him that I’d given five stars to Libra – but the application of the secateurs to my dorsal extremeties put an end to rational thought. I heard the terrible giggling of Bretsy – “Just one more finger, please! Hee hee!” and I pitched back into the welcome abyss of no more book reviews ever.
I surfaced into consciousness unwillingly like a resurrecting Jesus with too much alimony to pay. A slap to the chin and I remembered whose cleancut chiselled features were going to be framing the next supercilious question.
"Feeling better, Mr Bryant?" Yes, of course. It was The Don. But I wasn't going to go quietly.
"Not really, you post-modern gargoyle of unmeaning. You can take your silvery convolutions of ungrammatical feverdreams and shove them where the sun has never shone in a cavern measureless to man down to a sunless sea, O Felchmeister of the English tongue."
Crack. That was my head bouncing off the dingy walls of whatever foul rag and bone shop DeLillo had me banged me up in.
"Less of your mouth, and more of mine," he sneered.
I felt two pairs of strong arms grip me from each side. I caught a glimpse of DeLillo's vile acolytes. Just as I guessed. Steve Erickson on one side and yep, the notorious transvestite Bret Easton Ellis (“Bretsy” to his friends, of which there aren’t any) on the other. They were giggling like schoolgirls.
“Oooh, the things he said about me, and in public!”
“Oooh, let’s do page 149 and then page 301!”
"You won't get away with this," I grunted.
"We will, you know, we aren't in the YA business and we're not going to blog about this!" hissed Bretsy.
The Don told them to shut up and they squeaked into silence. It was pretty clear to me that there were American postmodern novelists and there was The Don. His very eyebrow had been reviewed ecstatically in the NYRB more times than all the others' entire sets of genitalia. And they knew it. And now he was heating up a pair of ordinary garden secateurs over a pile of remaindered early Franzen novels ( the ones before Oprah spotted him).
“Snip snip, Mr Bryant. One snip for every nasty little thing you said about me in your nasty reviews, and one more for encouraging your friends to mock me in surrealistic boxing match fantasies, and a final little snip for my two good buddies who have been really quite hurt by the dreadful things you say. I suppose you wish us all to write like your precious but sadly dead Raymond Carver? Hmm? ‘And then this sad alcoholic fell over and then this other sad alcoholic went shopping for a mop. The end.’ Is that it? That’s how you want us all to write?”
I was about to demolish his crude travesties of my crude travesties of his and his good buddies’ rancid fictions – I had vowed wild horses wouldn’t get me to remind him that I’d given five stars to Libra – but the application of the secateurs to my dorsal extremeties put an end to rational thought. I heard the terrible giggling of Bretsy – “Just one more finger, please! Hee hee!” and I pitched back into the welcome abyss of no more book reviews ever.
September 1, 2020
A sensual, hyper-real Delillian song. Donnie's poetic prose lilts in sustained focus through ghostly sibilance, sinusoidally evocative and throb-inducing.
A brief encounter and a drawn-out epiphany. An instant under a microscope reveals such texture as the merely human eye cannot perceive.
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.
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.
A brief encounter and a drawn-out epiphany. An instant under a microscope reveals such texture as the merely human eye cannot perceive.
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.
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.
November 1, 2022
WTH did I read?
Okay so I was extremely confused in the beginning because I thought this would be about maybe a divorce and then the woman having to deal with the emotions after. I could not have been more wrong.
I was so disturbed while reading this and maybe this just wasn't for me but the main character was not only confusing but also extremely weird with the person that showed up in her house.
I had to reread pages because I thought I was reading everything wrong and mixing up words because the plot was just so weird.
The description of everything was really detailed and that was still interesting but the focus was wow confusing. Like did I really need to know every details of what it is like to scrub your dirty feet until dead skin falls off? no I did not.
The ending was good and I liked how the artwork in the end was inspired by the things she went through but no she needs help.
The things she did to the boy were disgusting and I was confused on how there were no consequences to anything.
Okay so I was extremely confused in the beginning because I thought this would be about maybe a divorce and then the woman having to deal with the emotions after. I could not have been more wrong.
I was so disturbed while reading this and maybe this just wasn't for me but the main character was not only confusing but also extremely weird with the person that showed up in her house.
I had to reread pages because I thought I was reading everything wrong and mixing up words because the plot was just so weird.
The description of everything was really detailed and that was still interesting but the focus was wow confusing. Like did I really need to know every details of what it is like to scrub your dirty feet until dead skin falls off? no I did not.
The ending was good and I liked how the artwork in the end was inspired by the things she went through but no she needs help.
The things she did to the boy were disgusting and I was confused on how there were no consequences to anything.
October 28, 2017
The body artist: a novel, Don DeLillo
The Body Artist is a novella written in 2001 by Don DeLillo. It explores the grieving process of a young performance artist, Lauren Hartke, following the suicide of her significantly older husband. The novella is sometimes described as a ghost story due to the appearance of an enigmatic figure that Lauren discovers hiding in an upstairs room of the house following her husband's death.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: هشتم ماه اکتبر سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: بادی آرتیست؛ اثر: دان دلیلو؛ مترجم: منصوره وفایی؛ مشخصات نشر: «نشر نی، 1386، در 108 ص، شابک: 9643128857»؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آمریکایی قرن 20 م
انگار به نمایش در «انتظار گودو»ی ساموئل بکت بی شباهت نیست. منتقدی خواندن فصل آغازین همین کتاب را به جستجوی چیزی در تاریک روشنای صبحگاهی اتاق، آن هم پیش از نوشیدن یک فنجان قهوه، تشبیه میکند. ساختار «بادی آرتیست» بی شباهت به هایکو نیست. فصول این رمان مثل جمله های کوتاه دوپهلویی ست که با هم چفت نمیشوند، و همیشه مرز باریک و خیال انگیز میانشان احساس میشود. بخوانید: روز سفید مه آلودی ست، و بزرگراه تا آسمان خشکیده بالا میرود. چهار باند شمالی دارد، و تو در باند سوم میرانی و ماشینها جلواند، و پشت سر و دو طرف، اما نه خیلی زیاد و نه خیلی نزدیک. بالای سراشیبی که میرسی چیزی اتفاق میافتد و حالاست که دیگر ماشینها بی عجله میروند. انگار خود به خود رانده میشوند. نرم با دنده خلاص بر روی آن سطح پایین میروند. همه چیز کند است و مه آلود و خشکیده و همه ی اینها حول انگار اتفاق میافتد. همه ی ماشینها از جمله مال تو، انگار، بریده بریده حرکت میکنند، حضورشان را نشان میدهند یا خود را به رخ میکشند، و بزرگراه میان همهمه ی سفیدی امتداد مییابد. بعد حس و حال عوض میشود. سر و صدا و هیاهو و شلوغی پشت سر اند و تو که درد سنگینی را روی قفسه ی سینه ات احساس میکنی دوباره به زندگی کشانده میشوی. پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی
The Body Artist is a novella written in 2001 by Don DeLillo. It explores the grieving process of a young performance artist, Lauren Hartke, following the suicide of her significantly older husband. The novella is sometimes described as a ghost story due to the appearance of an enigmatic figure that Lauren discovers hiding in an upstairs room of the house following her husband's death.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: هشتم ماه اکتبر سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: بادی آرتیست؛ اثر: دان دلیلو؛ مترجم: منصوره وفایی؛ مشخصات نشر: «نشر نی، 1386، در 108 ص، شابک: 9643128857»؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آمریکایی قرن 20 م
انگار به نمایش در «انتظار گودو»ی ساموئل بکت بی شباهت نیست. منتقدی خواندن فصل آغازین همین کتاب را به جستجوی چیزی در تاریک روشنای صبحگاهی اتاق، آن هم پیش از نوشیدن یک فنجان قهوه، تشبیه میکند. ساختار «بادی آرتیست» بی شباهت به هایکو نیست. فصول این رمان مثل جمله های کوتاه دوپهلویی ست که با هم چفت نمیشوند، و همیشه مرز باریک و خیال انگیز میانشان احساس میشود. بخوانید: روز سفید مه آلودی ست، و بزرگراه تا آسمان خشکیده بالا میرود. چهار باند شمالی دارد، و تو در باند سوم میرانی و ماشینها جلواند، و پشت سر و دو طرف، اما نه خیلی زیاد و نه خیلی نزدیک. بالای سراشیبی که میرسی چیزی اتفاق میافتد و حالاست که دیگر ماشینها بی عجله میروند. انگار خود به خود رانده میشوند. نرم با دنده خلاص بر روی آن سطح پایین میروند. همه چیز کند است و مه آلود و خشکیده و همه ی اینها حول انگار اتفاق میافتد. همه ی ماشینها از جمله مال تو، انگار، بریده بریده حرکت میکنند، حضورشان را نشان میدهند یا خود را به رخ میکشند، و بزرگراه میان همهمه ی سفیدی امتداد مییابد. بعد حس و حال عوض میشود. سر و صدا و هیاهو و شلوغی پشت سر اند و تو که درد سنگینی را روی قفسه ی سینه ات احساس میکنی دوباره به زندگی کشانده میشوی. پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی
September 15, 2007
This is the third Don DiLillo book that I’ve read. I read White Noise in college, right along with everyone else, and thought it was a truly a modern classic, just like everybody else. Then, in graduate school, I also read Libra in a 500-level literature class called “Post Post Modern Fiction.” I thought it was terrible, although my reaction might have been warped the two utterly heartbreaking three-hour sessions my MA Literature classmates spent tearing the book apart, one-upping each other’s vocabulary usage, and saying silly things about books in general. You might even say they tore tore the book apart.
I have mixed feelings about The Body Artist. It’s a slim, sparse book centered on a performance artist, Lauren, who is grieving for her late husband. In the wake of his death, a strange man (Ghost? Hobo?) appears in her house, acts really weird, and then disappears.
On the positive side, the book is beautifully written - it reads more like a prose poem then a novel. The majority of the book is spent inside Lauren’s head and DiLillo has just plain weird ability to capture how people spend time alone with themselves:
“She cleaned the bathroom, using the spray-gun bottle of disinfectant. Then she held the nozzle of the spray gun to her head, seeing herself as anyone might do, alone, without special reference to the person’s circumstances. It was the pine-scent bottle, the pistol-grip bottle of tile-and-grout cleaner, killer of mildew, and she held the nozzle to her head, finger pressed to the plastic trigger, with her tongue hanging out for effect. This is what people do, she thought, alone in their lives.”
He also does an admirable job playing with time and perception - repeated actions, lines of dialogue, and images cement the airy-but-claustrophobic feel of the book and give it even more of the feel of a prose poem, as do the short second-person vignettes at the beginning of each chapter. It is, in all ways, pretty.
On the other hand, the book does suffer from a few issues that I also picked up on in his other books - he can be a little heavy-handed at times with the themes of the book. Sometimes it feels like he’s shouting, “This book is about time and perception! And heart ache! Just in case you still don’t get it, I’ll make Lauren’s last name is Hartke (Hart Take! Heart Take! Heart Ache!) and I’ll have her do a performance art piece at the end of the book that summarizes the themes of the book all over again, in case you missed them.”
It also comes down to a problem I often have with poetry - the actual plot of the story is so vague and stylized that I often didn’t understand what’s happening. Even the major reviews I read of the book contradict one another when it comes to basic plot points. Is the man in her home a figment of her imagination, a ghost, a homeless man, or her actual husband? I don’t mind subtly or delicacy, but I do like to sorta kinda know what’s going on. Or at least get a few hints? And don’t say, “It is what is it” or “It is what you want it to be” or “who he is isn’t important” because I think those are all cheap cop-outs.
Either way, what it comes down to is that DiLillo can write a sentence and create an atmosphere. I’ve heard I should read “Underworld” before I judge any further.
I have mixed feelings about The Body Artist. It’s a slim, sparse book centered on a performance artist, Lauren, who is grieving for her late husband. In the wake of his death, a strange man (Ghost? Hobo?) appears in her house, acts really weird, and then disappears.
On the positive side, the book is beautifully written - it reads more like a prose poem then a novel. The majority of the book is spent inside Lauren’s head and DiLillo has just plain weird ability to capture how people spend time alone with themselves:
“She cleaned the bathroom, using the spray-gun bottle of disinfectant. Then she held the nozzle of the spray gun to her head, seeing herself as anyone might do, alone, without special reference to the person’s circumstances. It was the pine-scent bottle, the pistol-grip bottle of tile-and-grout cleaner, killer of mildew, and she held the nozzle to her head, finger pressed to the plastic trigger, with her tongue hanging out for effect. This is what people do, she thought, alone in their lives.”
He also does an admirable job playing with time and perception - repeated actions, lines of dialogue, and images cement the airy-but-claustrophobic feel of the book and give it even more of the feel of a prose poem, as do the short second-person vignettes at the beginning of each chapter. It is, in all ways, pretty.
On the other hand, the book does suffer from a few issues that I also picked up on in his other books - he can be a little heavy-handed at times with the themes of the book. Sometimes it feels like he’s shouting, “This book is about time and perception! And heart ache! Just in case you still don’t get it, I’ll make Lauren’s last name is Hartke (Hart Take! Heart Take! Heart Ache!) and I’ll have her do a performance art piece at the end of the book that summarizes the themes of the book all over again, in case you missed them.”
It also comes down to a problem I often have with poetry - the actual plot of the story is so vague and stylized that I often didn’t understand what’s happening. Even the major reviews I read of the book contradict one another when it comes to basic plot points. Is the man in her home a figment of her imagination, a ghost, a homeless man, or her actual husband? I don’t mind subtly or delicacy, but I do like to sorta kinda know what’s going on. Or at least get a few hints? And don’t say, “It is what is it” or “It is what you want it to be” or “who he is isn’t important” because I think those are all cheap cop-outs.
Either way, what it comes down to is that DiLillo can write a sentence and create an atmosphere. I’ve heard I should read “Underworld” before I judge any further.
May 30, 2021
CRITIQUE:
Public and Private Spheres
Up to the point of "Underworld", Don Delillo seemed to be simultaneously interested in the public sphere and the private sphere of the participants in the public sphere. When it comes to personal relationships, we see mother and son, brother to brother, husband and wife, spouse/self and extramarital lover.
In "Underworld" itself, the private sphere grew so interesting that it almost took over the book and its focus on baseball, nuclear weapons and waste. DeLillo became increasingly interested in the Bronx of his own youth. For the first time, one of his novels was almost autobiographical.
"The Body Artist" was his first novel after the publication of "Underworld", and he continued his interest in the personal sphere.
"This is Art, Sex, Aggression, Cultural Criticism and Truth"
The eponymous body artist is 36 year old Lauren Hartke, who is the third wife of 64 year old film director, Rey Robles, born Alejandro Alquezar in Barcelona. He directed two "world-renowned" movies in the late 1970’s, while one of his films, "My Life for Yours", won the Palm d’Or. His next film, "Polaris", mixed American crime drama and Spanish surrealism, and became an art house success with a cult following.
Fictional film critic Philip Stansky wrote, "His work at its best extends the language of film. His subject is people in landscapes of estrangement. He found a spiritual knife-edge in the poetry of alien places, where extreme situations become inevitable and characters are forced toward life-defining moments."
His subsequent films were commercial and critical failures, which were partly a result of alcoholism and intermittent depression.
"This Strange Contained Reality"
By the time we encounter Rey, he is about to leave their rented beach house to return to New York, in order to commit suicide. Rey and Lauren circle each other in the kitchen while they prepare and eat breakfast. They observe objects closely, but not each other. They struggle to find a language with which to communicate.
Lauren concentrates on reading the Sunday newspaper, "the strange contained reality of paper and ink seeps through the house for a week and when you look at a page and distinguish one line from another it begins to gather you into it and there are people being tortured halfway around the world, who speak another language..." Other people live "somewhere in the words" of the newspaper, which distracts and estranges them (or at least reinforces their estrangement).
Lauren is most conscious of Rey's body, "the aura of the man, a residue of smoke and unbroken habit". These are physical, if not emotional òr spiritual, details.
We, the readers, learn of Rey's death by reading a fictional newspaper article at the end of the first chapter, in which we hear about his discovery of a "spiritual knife-edge in alien places", although it seems that this knife-edge slices through familiar people and places as well.
Mr. Tuttle
Post-suicide, Lauren continues to walk absent-mindedly through the beach-house. One day (as had occurred three months before when Rey was there), she hears a noise upstairs. This time it turns out to be a young boy, "medicated maybe", sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear: "He had a foundling quality". He was like a cross between a squatter and an idiot savant:
Names and Numbers
Lauren gives the boy the name "Mr. Tuttle" after her science teacher, because she thought "it would make him easier to see."
Names and numbers have always been vital to DeLillo's understanding of language and communication. Soon Lauren realises that the boy has overheard her disconnected conversations with Rey, has memorized them, and is able to repeat them verbatim, even if he doesn't comprehend their meaning. Just because he is able to mimic those whom he hears, doesn't mean that the mere utterance of language is an act of communication. He's missing the code that turns language into a social bond:
It's interesting that DeLillo and the "body artist" discuss this semiotic code in terms of the language of touch or sensation.
"The Thing is Communicated Somehow"
Then she extrapolates: "Maybe this man is defenceless against the truth of the world."
How can there be truth without consensus?
Equally, "there is nothing he can do to imagine time existing in reassuring sequence, passing, flowing, happening – the world happens, it has to, we feel it – with names and dates and distinctions...
She suspects that he must be in a different state of being to her and other people: "She didn't think his eye was able to search out and shape things. Not like normal anyway. The eye is supposed to shape and process and paint. It tells us a story we want to believe."
So he is unable to name anything, let alone to tell a story, which consists of "the standard sun-kissed chronology of events...It is time that defines your existence."
He can't even name himself..."like a man anonymous to himself."
She concludes that "there were no stirrings of tremulous self...The thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls..."
She thinks of him as a "surplus of vulnerability" and wonders whether he feels lonely.
"Maybe It Was All An Erotic Reverie"
Even though they can't communicate, for both Lauren and DeLillo, "there is a story, a flow of consciousness and possibility. The future comes into being."
And so a novel, or at least a novella, came into being. Or perhaps it's the story of Lauren’s most recent introspective performance piece?
SOUNDTRACK:
Public and Private Spheres
Up to the point of "Underworld", Don Delillo seemed to be simultaneously interested in the public sphere and the private sphere of the participants in the public sphere. When it comes to personal relationships, we see mother and son, brother to brother, husband and wife, spouse/self and extramarital lover.
In "Underworld" itself, the private sphere grew so interesting that it almost took over the book and its focus on baseball, nuclear weapons and waste. DeLillo became increasingly interested in the Bronx of his own youth. For the first time, one of his novels was almost autobiographical.
"The Body Artist" was his first novel after the publication of "Underworld", and he continued his interest in the personal sphere.
"This is Art, Sex, Aggression, Cultural Criticism and Truth"
The eponymous body artist is 36 year old Lauren Hartke, who is the third wife of 64 year old film director, Rey Robles, born Alejandro Alquezar in Barcelona. He directed two "world-renowned" movies in the late 1970’s, while one of his films, "My Life for Yours", won the Palm d’Or. His next film, "Polaris", mixed American crime drama and Spanish surrealism, and became an art house success with a cult following.
Fictional film critic Philip Stansky wrote, "His work at its best extends the language of film. His subject is people in landscapes of estrangement. He found a spiritual knife-edge in the poetry of alien places, where extreme situations become inevitable and characters are forced toward life-defining moments."
His subsequent films were commercial and critical failures, which were partly a result of alcoholism and intermittent depression.
"This Strange Contained Reality"
By the time we encounter Rey, he is about to leave their rented beach house to return to New York, in order to commit suicide. Rey and Lauren circle each other in the kitchen while they prepare and eat breakfast. They observe objects closely, but not each other. They struggle to find a language with which to communicate.
Lauren concentrates on reading the Sunday newspaper, "the strange contained reality of paper and ink seeps through the house for a week and when you look at a page and distinguish one line from another it begins to gather you into it and there are people being tortured halfway around the world, who speak another language..." Other people live "somewhere in the words" of the newspaper, which distracts and estranges them (or at least reinforces their estrangement).
Lauren is most conscious of Rey's body, "the aura of the man, a residue of smoke and unbroken habit". These are physical, if not emotional òr spiritual, details.
"Sometimes she doesn't think of what she wants to say to him until he walks out of whatever room they're in. Then she thinks of it. Then she either calls after him or doesn't and he responds or doesn't."
We, the readers, learn of Rey's death by reading a fictional newspaper article at the end of the first chapter, in which we hear about his discovery of a "spiritual knife-edge in alien places", although it seems that this knife-edge slices through familiar people and places as well.
Mr. Tuttle
Post-suicide, Lauren continues to walk absent-mindedly through the beach-house. One day (as had occurred three months before when Rey was there), she hears a noise upstairs. This time it turns out to be a young boy, "medicated maybe", sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear: "He had a foundling quality". He was like a cross between a squatter and an idiot savant:
"She tried not to press him for information. She found the distance interesting, the halting quality of his speech and actions, the self-taught quality, his seeming unconcern about what would happen to him now. Not apathy or indifference, she thought, but his limited ability to consider the implications. She wasn't sure what it meant to him, being found in someone else's house."
Names and Numbers
Lauren gives the boy the name "Mr. Tuttle" after her science teacher, because she thought "it would make him easier to see."
Names and numbers have always been vital to DeLillo's understanding of language and communication. Soon Lauren realises that the boy has overheard her disconnected conversations with Rey, has memorized them, and is able to repeat them verbatim, even if he doesn't comprehend their meaning. Just because he is able to mimic those whom he hears, doesn't mean that the mere utterance of language is an act of communication. He's missing the code that turns language into a social bond:
"There's a code in the simplest conversation that tells the speakers what's going on outside the bare acoustics. This was missing when they talked...She lost touch with him..."
It's interesting that DeLillo and the "body artist" discuss this semiotic code in terms of the language of touch or sensation.
"The Thing is Communicated Somehow"
Then she extrapolates: "Maybe this man is defenceless against the truth of the world."
How can there be truth without consensus?
Equally, "there is nothing he can do to imagine time existing in reassuring sequence, passing, flowing, happening – the world happens, it has to, we feel it – with names and dates and distinctions...
"His future is unnamed. It is simultaneous, somehow, with the present. Neither happens before or after the other and they are equally accessible, perhaps, if only in his mind."
She suspects that he must be in a different state of being to her and other people: "She didn't think his eye was able to search out and shape things. Not like normal anyway. The eye is supposed to shape and process and paint. It tells us a story we want to believe."
So he is unable to name anything, let alone to tell a story, which consists of "the standard sun-kissed chronology of events...It is time that defines your existence."
He can't even name himself..."like a man anonymous to himself."
She concludes that "there were no stirrings of tremulous self...The thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls..."
"He is in another structure, another culture, where time is something like itself, sheer and bare, empty of shelter."
She thinks of him as a "surplus of vulnerability" and wonders whether he feels lonely.
"Maybe It Was All An Erotic Reverie"
Even though they can't communicate, for both Lauren and DeLillo, "there is a story, a flow of consciousness and possibility. The future comes into being."
And so a novel, or at least a novella, came into being. Or perhaps it's the story of Lauren’s most recent introspective performance piece?
SOUNDTRACK:
Read
September 28, 2020Жила-була і переклала.
Овдовіла перформансистка блукає домом, де жила зі своїм покійним чолові��ом. Дім або haunted, або ні. Якщо таки haunted, то його химерний відвідувач чи то існує в усіх часах одночасно, без поділу на минуле й теперішнє – а отже, він існує зокрема в часі, де чоловік господині дому ще живий – або це все вигадки. Наскільки я пам’ятаю, Фройд тлумачив історії про привидів як історії про повернення repressed травматичних спогадів: те, що неможливо інтегрувати до досвіду, повертається в формі видінь. Так і тут: горе занадто свіже й завелике, легше досліджувати його периметр, ніж суть – а що, якщо часу не існує (досвід проживання часу – це завжди дуже тілесний досвід, тож невипадково, що головна героїня художниця тіла і здійснює всякі фізичні трансформації); а що, як час-з-одностороннім-рухом – це тільки хиба нашого сприйняття.
Для перекладу - ще те пекельце, бо, по-перше, повістинка повністю побудована на тавтологіях і словниковому запасі у приблизно 50 слів, тобто від усього, що звиклося вважати прикметами доброго письма – уникай повторів! демонструй багатство синонімічного ряду! і так далі, і таке інше – тут доводиться відмовлятися, нещадно б’ючи себе по руках. По-друге, у де Лілло своєрідний синтаксис, який дає ефект злегка запізнілої реакції, ніби сигнал пробивається крізь товщу води – означення відносяться трошки далі вглиб речення, ніж ти очікуєш (штибу “він устав і підійшов до столу, чоловік цей”), і це balancing act між тим, щоб зберегти своєрідність, і при цьому не сповзти в незрозумілу крякозябру. Але пригода була цікава.
Овдовіла перформансистка блукає домом, де жила зі своїм покійним чолові��ом. Дім або haunted, або ні. Якщо таки haunted, то його химерний відвідувач чи то існує в усіх часах одночасно, без поділу на минуле й теперішнє – а отже, він існує зокрема в часі, де чоловік господині дому ще живий – або це все вигадки. Наскільки я пам’ятаю, Фройд тлумачив історії про привидів як історії про повернення repressed травматичних спогадів: те, що неможливо інтегрувати до досвіду, повертається в формі видінь. Так і тут: горе занадто свіже й завелике, легше досліджувати його периметр, ніж суть – а що, якщо часу не існує (досвід проживання часу – це завжди дуже тілесний досвід, тож невипадково, що головна героїня художниця тіла і здійснює всякі фізичні трансформації); а що, як час-з-одностороннім-рухом – це тільки хиба нашого сприйняття.
Для перекладу - ще те пекельце, бо, по-перше, повістинка повністю побудована на тавтологіях і словниковому запасі у приблизно 50 слів, тобто від усього, що звиклося вважати прикметами доброго письма – уникай повторів! демонструй багатство синонімічного ряду! і так далі, і таке інше – тут доводиться відмовлятися, нещадно б’ючи себе по руках. По-друге, у де Лілло своєрідний синтаксис, який дає ефект злегка запізнілої реакції, ніби сигнал пробивається крізь товщу води – означення відносяться трошки далі вглиб речення, ніж ти очікуєш (штибу “він устав і підійшов до столу, чоловік цей”), і це balancing act між тим, щоб зберегти своєрідність, і при цьому не сповзти в незрозумілу крякозябру. Але пригода була цікава.
April 28, 2022
Već i vrapci znaju da američka književnost ne taži moj čitalački apetit i da ne uspevam da se otmem utisku da svaki tamošnji pisac jednim okom iščitava tek prvo napisano poglavlje, a drugim već bira kravatu za sastanak sa filmskim producentom.
De Lilo u ovom slučaju puca na bergmanovski fazon i pogađa metu uz samo jedan prestup: smetnuo je s uma osnovni princip minimalizma, pa je dodavao, nekako najviše baš tamo gde se moralo oduzimati. Time je postigao da pogledam šta je još napisao: rekla bih da bi mu drugi centri bili lakše dometni. Ovaj je pak, a očekivano, promašio (Bolanjo, čini mi se, negde piše o razlici između peciva iz mikrotalasne i francuske pekare, nije tu u pitanju puka komparativna prednost), zbog čega je Bodi artist sasvim bezveze izvedba prilično dobre zamisli.
Ne radi se samo o tome što se ne slažemo oko toga šta je umetnost a šta izraz (za mene je slikanje vaginom isključivo začudni izraz). Ni o tome što ne mislim da je potrebno uvoditi babu Japanku kao simbol smirene samosvesti (recimo, iako ne znam koji će mu ta baba, i s jaknom i bez nje). Ni što bi ona scena u kadi bila tristasedamnaest puta funkcionalnija da me je pustio da pretpostavljam pipkanje za genitalije. Ni o tome što ovoliko prazna protagonistkinja ne može biti ni epizodista, a kamoli stožer fabule. Ni o tome što sveznajući pisac treba da ume da odglumi objektivnost, makar iz pristojnosti.
Radi se o tome što se ne možete oslanjati na usporenost ako nemate strpljenja da izvedete nešto inventivnije od spuštanja broja obrtaja. Drugim rečima, kad pustite Sepulturu* unazad slušate Sepulturu unazad.
Šteta za ideju.
*De Lilo ne spominje Sepulturu (srećom po Sepulturu), nego mu je postavka jednako nesretna kao i onima što veruju u svemoć i neumitnost gospodara zla koji dolazi na jedan tako glupavi poziv.
De Lilo u ovom slučaju puca na bergmanovski fazon i pogađa metu uz samo jedan prestup: smetnuo je s uma osnovni princip minimalizma, pa je dodavao, nekako najviše baš tamo gde se moralo oduzimati. Time je postigao da pogledam šta je još napisao: rekla bih da bi mu drugi centri bili lakše dometni. Ovaj je pak, a očekivano, promašio (Bolanjo, čini mi se, negde piše o razlici između peciva iz mikrotalasne i francuske pekare, nije tu u pitanju puka komparativna prednost), zbog čega je Bodi artist sasvim bezveze izvedba prilično dobre zamisli.
Ne radi se samo o tome što se ne slažemo oko toga šta je umetnost a šta izraz (za mene je slikanje vaginom isključivo začudni izraz). Ni o tome što ne mislim da je potrebno uvoditi babu Japanku kao simbol smirene samosvesti (recimo, iako ne znam koji će mu ta baba, i s jaknom i bez nje). Ni što bi ona scena u kadi bila tristasedamnaest puta funkcionalnija da me je pustio da pretpostavljam pipkanje za genitalije. Ni o tome što ovoliko prazna protagonistkinja ne može biti ni epizodista, a kamoli stožer fabule. Ni o tome što sveznajući pisac treba da ume da odglumi objektivnost, makar iz pristojnosti.
Radi se o tome što se ne možete oslanjati na usporenost ako nemate strpljenja da izvedete nešto inventivnije od spuštanja broja obrtaja. Drugim rečima, kad pustite Sepulturu* unazad slušate Sepulturu unazad.
Šteta za ideju.
*De Lilo ne spominje Sepulturu (srećom po Sepulturu), nego mu je postavka jednako nesretna kao i onima što veruju u svemoć i neumitnost gospodara zla koji dolazi na jedan tako glupavi poziv.
September 17, 2016
A minimalistic, intimate and slightly odd look at the grieving process of Lauren, who after her husband takes his own life returns to their home on the coast of New England to be alone only to discover a strange man hiding out in one of rooms, but just who is he and how long has he been there?.This reads as a modern ghost story and a meditation of time with a profound sense of isolation from the rest of the living. There is this eerie feeling hanging over everything which keeps what little story there is above par, as a fan of DeLillo this is probably his least accessible work. Best read in one sitting.
Read
April 3, 2021Кажуть, переклад уже пішов у друк!
Мій відгук на оригінал тут.
У перекладі буде прекрасна передмова Максима Нестелєєва, яка вводить повість у контекст і витискає з неї максимум сенсів - початок передмови Макс цитує тут.
Перші абзаци повістинки на пробу:
Час, схоже, минає. Світ здійснюється, розгортається на окремі миті, ти спиняєшся поглянути на павука, який тулиться до своєї павутини. Є прудкість світла, відчуття чіткості обрисів усіх речей, блискучі патьоки в затоці. Ти найгостріше розумієш, ким ти є, дужого, яскравого дня після бурі, коли навіть найменший облетілий листок прошито самоусвідомленням. Вітер шумить у соснах, світ безповоротно входить у буття, павук гойдається на розколисаній вітром павутині.
Це сталося останнього ранку, коли вон�� були тут, на кухні, одночасно: вони швендяли одне повз одного, щоби дістати щось із шафи чи шухляди, чекали, доки інший відійде від умивальника чи холодильника, навколо них досі танули сни, вона тримала жменю чорниці під струменем із крана, заплющивши очі, і вдихала запах, який здіймався від ягід.
Він сидів із газетою й помішував каву. Свою каву, у своїй чашці. Газету читали разом, але за непроговореною домовленістю та належала їй.
— Я хотів тобі дещо сказати, але що.
Вона пустила воду з крана і звернула увагу. Уперше в житті звернула на це увагу.
— Про дім. От що, — сказав він. — Я хотів тобі дещо сказати.
Мій відгук на оригінал тут.
У перекладі буде прекрасна передмова Максима Нестелєєва, яка вводить повість у контекст і витискає з неї максимум сенсів - початок передмови Макс цитує тут.
Перші абзаци повістинки на пробу:
Час, схоже, минає. Світ здійснюється, розгортається на окремі миті, ти спиняєшся поглянути на павука, який тулиться до своєї павутини. Є прудкість світла, відчуття чіткості обрисів усіх речей, блискучі патьоки в затоці. Ти найгостріше розумієш, ким ти є, дужого, яскравого дня після бурі, коли навіть найменший облетілий листок прошито самоусвідомленням. Вітер шумить у соснах, світ безповоротно входить у буття, павук гойдається на розколисаній вітром павутині.
Це сталося останнього ранку, коли вон�� були тут, на кухні, одночасно: вони швендяли одне повз одного, щоби дістати щось із шафи чи шухляди, чекали, доки інший відійде від умивальника чи холодильника, навколо них досі танули сни, вона тримала жменю чорниці під струменем із крана, заплющивши очі, і вдихала запах, який здіймався від ягід.
Він сидів із газетою й помішував каву. Свою каву, у своїй чашці. Газету читали разом, але за непроговореною домовленістю та належала їй.
— Я хотів тобі дещо сказати, але що.
Вона пустила воду з крана і звернула увагу. Уперше в житті звернула на це увагу.
— Про дім. От що, — сказав він. — Я хотів тобі дещо сказати.
November 13, 2011
I picked this book from the 1001 books list based on the title - "The Body Artist". I will also shamefacedly admit that it was part of my cherry picking short books off the 1001 list in a bid to cheat my way to a higher number of "read" books. Don't do this people, it can backfire. It is also a good reminder that we should read for pleasure and not to fulfil a list, or make up numbers or as a sort of enforced chore. Which was what this book became.
It appealed to me, mainly because I spend a lot of time digging up bodies and thinking about the human condition in a non philosophical sense. I'm not very philosophical. Despite what the grave digger in Hamlet would have you believe, spending your time up to your arse in charnel and musing upon the bony visages of the long departed will not turn you into a thoughtful poet. It will turn you into a slightly ghoulish cynic who sees us for what we are, mobile worm food which has not started rotting yet.
Anyway, a friend had already warned me off Don DeLillo but foolishly I chose not to heed that warning and stumbled off into the cover of this book instead. Really, really wish I had not. Half a day of my life (it's a mercifully short book) which is not reclaimable and means I am now officially half a day closer to my annelid snack-fest destiny while having lost out to a load of self indulgent piffle. The premise is OK but the sentence structure and stylistic traits of the book are not for me. "Lauren ate her breakfast, or not, it didn't matte". Come on Don! They're your characters so please decide whether or not they performed an action. Otherwise that's just lazy.
For those of you who also read this and decided that Don DeLillo had had his one and only chance on your bookshelves, don't lose heart! I recently read White Noise and it endeared me to Don, really it did. I'm just about to start reading Cosmopolis and have Underworld lined up like a threatening bulky bully on my shelf too. I'll get back to you once it's finished pummelling my face with its daunting word mass.
It appealed to me, mainly because I spend a lot of time digging up bodies and thinking about the human condition in a non philosophical sense. I'm not very philosophical. Despite what the grave digger in Hamlet would have you believe, spending your time up to your arse in charnel and musing upon the bony visages of the long departed will not turn you into a thoughtful poet. It will turn you into a slightly ghoulish cynic who sees us for what we are, mobile worm food which has not started rotting yet.
Anyway, a friend had already warned me off Don DeLillo but foolishly I chose not to heed that warning and stumbled off into the cover of this book instead. Really, really wish I had not. Half a day of my life (it's a mercifully short book) which is not reclaimable and means I am now officially half a day closer to my annelid snack-fest destiny while having lost out to a load of self indulgent piffle. The premise is OK but the sentence structure and stylistic traits of the book are not for me. "Lauren ate her breakfast, or not, it didn't matte". Come on Don! They're your characters so please decide whether or not they performed an action. Otherwise that's just lazy.
For those of you who also read this and decided that Don DeLillo had had his one and only chance on your bookshelves, don't lose heart! I recently read White Noise and it endeared me to Don, really it did. I'm just about to start reading Cosmopolis and have Underworld lined up like a threatening bulky bully on my shelf too. I'll get back to you once it's finished pummelling my face with its daunting word mass.
January 8, 2021
A very strange book. I don't know how to even review it. This book opens with a couple: Rey an old filmmaker and Lauren a body artist, quite recently wed, having their breakfast at their home. This scene is very interesting, confusing and strange. They converse, but neither are listening. They want to talk more, but they don't know what. Lauren is fascinated by the birds that come to visit them and she doesn't listen to what Rey says to her. She talks to him about a strange sound in the house, as if there is another person inside it. They had already checked the home but couldn't find anyone. After the breakfast, Rey goes to his ex-wife's apartment and commits suicide!
Are we missing something??
After a few days, Lauren finds someone inside the house. A strange boy/man whose age she cannot determine. He doesn't speak anything except parts of the entire conversation she had with Rey. She calls him Mr.Tuttle. She takes care of him, feeds him and he in return tells him more of the conversation as if played from a recording device.
This book reminded me so much about Wylding Hall, though I'm not sure why. Towards the end I wondered if Tuttle was Lauren's way of coping with the grief of her husband's loss, as she did not listen to his words during breakfast. I'm still confused about this book and will have to read it again sometime soon.
Are we missing something??
After a few days, Lauren finds someone inside the house. A strange boy/man whose age she cannot determine. He doesn't speak anything except parts of the entire conversation she had with Rey. She calls him Mr.Tuttle. She takes care of him, feeds him and he in return tells him more of the conversation as if played from a recording device.
This book reminded me so much about Wylding Hall, though I'm not sure why. Towards the end I wondered if Tuttle was Lauren's way of coping with the grief of her husband's loss, as she did not listen to his words during breakfast. I'm still confused about this book and will have to read it again sometime soon.
August 25, 2023
Holy shit this was so haunting and gorgeous.
September 19, 2022
якось головна героїня (у неї є ім’я, але в тексті вона підкреслено «вона», то на цьому й залишмося) знаходить у себе в сніданку чужу волосину, а пізніше того самого дня її чоловіка знаходять із простреленою головою у вітальні колишньої. коротше, із самого ранку щось пішло не так. але прикрі трапунки на тому не закінчуються, і невдовзі вдома в героїні знаходиться хтось, зовні наче звичайна людина, однак у спілкуванні — наче й не зовсім.
може, це персоніфікація її горя, усе-таки героїня дуже любила свого чоловіка (добре, що вона нам про це кілька разів нагадує, бо зі сцени їхнього спільного сніданку складно було би зрозуміти); може, це божевільний, який утік із якогось поблизького притулку (але це припущення не спиняє героїню від того, щоб зайнятися з ним сексом, до якого він не виявив жодної ініціативи); може, це взагалі інопланетянин (і думка героїні «гм, а раптом я перша людина, що викрала інопланетянина?» це моє улюблене місце в книжці). у кожному разі, це відчайдушний постмодернізм, тож однозначної відповіді немає, і ваші інтерпретації нічим не гірші за авторську, бо автор помер. (але не делілло, із делілло поки що все норм; ну, крім того, що про любов у нього виходить не так добре, як про академічне самозванство).
може, це персоніфікація її горя, усе-таки героїня дуже любила свого чоловіка (добре, що вона нам про це кілька разів нагадує, бо зі сцени їхнього спільного сніданку складно було би зрозуміти); може, це божевільний, який утік із якогось поблизького притулку (але це припущення не спиняє героїню від того, щоб зайнятися з ним сексом, до якого він не виявив жодної ініціативи); може, це взагалі інопланетянин (і думка героїні «гм, а раптом я перша людина, що викрала інопланетянина?» це моє улюблене місце в книжці). у кожному разі, це відчайдушний постмодернізм, тож однозначної відповіді немає, і ваші інтерпретації нічим не гірші за авторську, бо автор помер. (але не делілло, із делілло поки що все норм; ну, крім того, що про любов у нього виходить не так добре, як про академічне самозванство).
February 5, 2018
“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 it was 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?”The Body Artist es una poderosa novelette sobre el dolor, el delirio y la corriente temporal que se lo lleva todo. Esperaba muy poco de esta obra secundaria de DeLillo, pero me terminó sorprendiendo. La prosa, por supuesto, es fascinante y la historia se desenvuelve de manera minimalista, lo que hace que cada hecho constitutivo resulte asfixiante y efectivo en la exposición del sufrimiento inmediato. Es, probablemente, su libro más deprimente.
Lo recomiendo mucho, especialmente para leer en una noche.
February 16, 2024
آدم فکر میکنه شاید نوشته های بکت باشه،ولیخب
توی خانه منتظرماند، کتاب به دست، پشت به يک تکيهگاه نشسته بود
فکرمیکرد، فکر نمیکرد
برای هيچ زنی ازين بدتر نمیشود.
توی خانه منتظرماند، کتاب به دست، پشت به يک تکيهگاه نشسته بود
فکرمیکرد، فکر نمیکرد
برای هيچ زنی ازين بدتر نمیشود.
April 3, 2021
комбо: поетична проза від Дона Делілло. прекрасний переклад від Ярослави Стріхи.
P.S. + моя післямова, яка починається так -
Час, мова і людське горе
У заголовку — відповідь Делілло на питання про тему «Художниці тіла» і розтлумачувати її — це як докладно пояснювати диво, описане в його дванадцятому романі, хоч письменнику до цього не звикати: він не втомлюється дивувати своїх читачів з 1960 року.
Існує безліч класифікацій багатодесятилітньої творчості Делілло, однак найчастіше межа проходить якраз по тому роману, який ви тримаєте у руках. Так Джозеф Д’юї поділяє творчість письменника на три хронологічні етапи, що, в його інтерпретації, представляють різні стратегії відновлення автентичності власного «я» після покарання «непохитною безпорадністю», пережитого американцями за останні 50 років:
1) автор «сприйняв вулицю»: від «Американи» (1971) до «Собаки-посіпаки» (1978);
2) випробував своє глибоке захоплення словом: від «Імен» (1982) до «Мао ІІ» (1991);
3) звернувся до «підтекстів душі»: від «Підземного світу» (1997) до «Людина, що падає» (2007).
Останній натепер третій етап також називають філософським або мінімалістичним, якщо зважити на те, що попереднє століття Дон Делілло завершив 827-сторінковим романом «Підземний світ», а наше почав з повістинки у сім разів меншої, яка підбивала підсумки ХХ віку. На думку письменника, дві події визначили американську історію минулого століття — убивство Кеннеді (1963) та трагедія 11 вересня (2001). Остання — межова дата, із якою багато хто пов’язує символічний початок нового століття, а культурологи — кінець постмодернізму, й обидві вони не могли оминути уважний візіонерський погляд Дона Делілло. Розслідуванню всіх обставин і контекстів загибелі президента він присвятив роман «Терези», що опублікували за 25 років після самої події, а для осмислення трагедії 9/11 йому вже знадобилося значно менше часу — роман «Людина, що падає» надрукували за 6 років після теракту.
«Художниця тіла» вийшла в 2001 році, але в лютому, тож, зрозуміло, що про велику американську трагедію в ньому ще не йдеться, натомість Делілло осмислює трагедію маленьку, сімейну, у якій, як у дзеркалі, відбивається людина нового тисячоліття. Попри незначний обсяг «Художниця тіла» — це практично поема в прозі, ліроепічний етюд, що, оглядаючи його новітню прозу, спокушає перевизначити весь новітній період творчості письменника як поетичний...
а закінчується вже в паперовій версії ;)
P.S. + моя післямова, яка починається так -
Час, мова і людське горе
У заголовку — відповідь Делілло на питання про тему «Художниці тіла» і розтлумачувати її — це як докладно пояснювати диво, описане в його дванадцятому романі, хоч письменнику до цього не звикати: він не втомлюється дивувати своїх читачів з 1960 року.
Існує безліч класифікацій багатодесятилітньої творчості Делілло, однак найчастіше межа проходить якраз по тому роману, який ви тримаєте у руках. Так Джозеф Д’юї поділяє творчість письменника на три хронологічні етапи, що, в його інтерпретації, представляють різні стратегії відновлення автентичності власного «я» після покарання «непохитною безпорадністю», пережитого американцями за останні 50 років:
1) автор «сприйняв вулицю»: від «Американи» (1971) до «Собаки-посіпаки» (1978);
2) випробував своє глибоке захоплення словом: від «Імен» (1982) до «Мао ІІ» (1991);
3) звернувся до «підтекстів душі»: від «Підземного світу» (1997) до «Людина, що падає» (2007).
Останній натепер третій етап також називають філософським або мінімалістичним, якщо зважити на те, що попереднє століття Дон Делілло завершив 827-сторінковим романом «Підземний світ», а наше почав з повістинки у сім разів меншої, яка підбивала підсумки ХХ віку. На думку письменника, дві події визначили американську історію минулого століття — убивство Кеннеді (1963) та трагедія 11 вересня (2001). Остання — межова дата, із якою багато хто пов’язує символічний початок нового століття, а культурологи — кінець постмодернізму, й обидві вони не могли оминути уважний візіонерський погляд Дона Делілло. Розслідуванню всіх обставин і контекстів загибелі президента він присвятив роман «Терези», що опублікували за 25 років після самої події, а для осмислення трагедії 9/11 йому вже знадобилося значно менше часу — роман «Людина, що падає» надрукували за 6 років після теракту.
«Художниця тіла» вийшла в 2001 році, але в лютому, тож, зрозуміло, що про велику американську трагедію в ньому ще не йдеться, натомість Делілло осмислює трагедію маленьку, сімейну, у якій, як у дзеркалі, відбивається людина нового тисячоліття. Попри незначний обсяг «Художниця тіла» — це практично поема в прозі, ліроепічний етюд, що, оглядаючи його новітню прозу, спокушає перевизначити весь новітній період творчості письменника як поетичний...
а закінчується вже в паперовій версії ;)
September 14, 2018
Sono molto tentata di mettere una stella anziché due, ma sento che comunque lo stile di DeLillo ha un suo perché, e non è da buttare. Non sono riuscita ad apprezzare nient'altro, però: la trama non esiste, i personaggi sono ombre che fanno (poche) cose che non vengono spiegate, o meglio, che vengono spiegate così tanto, analizzate così nel dettaglio, trascinate così per le lunghe, che finiscono per essere svuotate di qualsiasi significato. E, soprattutto, è un libro di una noia mortale, le sue 100 pagine sembrano 400 e non si fanno affatto leggere con piacere.
EDIT: Più ci ripenso più mi dico che determinate scelte stilistiche dell'autore non vanno a compensare le cose che ho detestato di questo libro, ossia tutto il resto. Ho dato una stella per molto meno.
EDIT: Più ci ripenso più mi dico che determinate scelte stilistiche dell'autore non vanno a compensare le cose che ho detestato di questo libro, ossia tutto il resto. Ho dato una stella per molto meno.
February 5, 2017
τελειωσα και με το 2ο βιβλιο του Delillo.μπορω να πω οτι μου αρεσε πολυ περισσοτερο απο το point omega.
Η ιστορια ξεκινα με μια τρομερα περιγραφικη σκηνη ενος πρωινου που παιρνει ενα ζευγαρι ενος 60+ κυριου και μιας 35χρονης body artist.σε αυτη τη σκηνη συμμετεχουν με εναν μαγικο τροπο ολες οι αισθησεις του αναγνωστη.πώς? αρκει να πουμε οτι η σκηνη αυτη εκτυλισσεται σε κοντα 25 σελιδες(!)συνεχιζοντας, ο αντρας φευγει και αυτοκτονει.εδω λοιπον ξεκινα το ολο θεμα του βιβλιου.το πως αυτη η γυναικα μενει μονη να αντιμετωπισει την απωλεια.στις υπολοιπες λοιπον 125 σελιδες περιγραφεται με λεπτομερεια ακριβως αυτη η αισθηση απωλειας, μοναξιας, ανικανοτητας να δεχτει κανεις οτι αυτη η μαθηματικης ακριβειας καθημερινοτητα που περιγραφεται στην πρωτη σκηνη δεν θα υπαρξει ποτε ξανα..η πρωταγωνιστρια λοιπον μη μπορώντας να δεχτει κατι τετοιο, δημιουργει με τη φαντασια της ενα αγορι-αντρα που υποτιθεται πως βρισκει στη σοφιτα και μιλα με φρασεις του αντρα της..
το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον ηταν πολυ πολυ δυνατο.σε αναγκαζει να βιωσεις ακριβως ολα τα συναισθηματα απο τα οποια περνα η πρωταγωνιστρια, να βιωσεις τον πονο της απωλειας τον οποιο σωματοποιει κυριολεκτικα(ως body artist) και ο οποιος απειλει να την εξαφανισει.τρομακτικα ωμο και μυστηριωδες.μου δημιουργησε ενα αισθημα ιλιγγου..χωρις αμφιβολια ο Delillo ειναι εξαιρετικος στο να δημιουργει ωμα συναισθηματα με το χειρισμο των λεξεων που επιλεγει. 3.5 αστερια!!
"..τοτε βλεπει τον εαυτο της να σερνεται προς το μερος του.εχει την εικονα μπροστα στα ματια της.σερνεται με τα 4 στο πατωμα και της φαινεται τοσο αληθινο, σαν να συμβαινει.αισθανεται να εχει αποσπαστει μαλακα και βλεπει οτι προσπαθει να τον τραβηξει κατω στο πατωμα μαζι της, να τον σταματησει, να τον κρατησει εδω, ή οτι σκαρφαλωνει πανω του, οτι διαλυεται και χωνεται μεσα του ή απλως οτι μενει μπρουμυτα στο πατωμα και ξεσπαει σε ασταματητους λυγμους ενω ο εαυτος της την κοιτάζει απο ψηλα."
Η ιστορια ξεκινα με μια τρομερα περιγραφικη σκηνη ενος πρωινου που παιρνει ενα ζευγαρι ενος 60+ κυριου και μιας 35χρονης body artist.σε αυτη τη σκηνη συμμετεχουν με εναν μαγικο τροπο ολες οι αισθησεις του αναγνωστη.πώς? αρκει να πουμε οτι η σκηνη αυτη εκτυλισσεται σε κοντα 25 σελιδες(!)συνεχιζοντας, ο αντρας φευγει και αυτοκτονει.εδω λοιπον ξεκινα το ολο θεμα του βιβλιου.το πως αυτη η γυναικα μενει μονη να αντιμετωπισει την απωλεια.στις υπολοιπες λοιπον 125 σελιδες περιγραφεται με λεπτομερεια ακριβως αυτη η αισθηση απωλειας, μοναξιας, ανικανοτητας να δεχτει κανεις οτι αυτη η μαθηματικης ακριβειας καθημερινοτητα που περιγραφεται στην πρωτη σκηνη δεν θα υπαρξει ποτε ξανα..η πρωταγωνιστρια λοιπον μη μπορώντας να δεχτει κατι τετοιο, δημιουργει με τη φαντασια της ενα αγορι-αντρα που υποτιθεται πως βρισκει στη σοφιτα και μιλα με φρασεις του αντρα της..
το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον ηταν πολυ πολυ δυνατο.σε αναγκαζει να βιωσεις ακριβως ολα τα συναισθηματα απο τα οποια περνα η πρωταγωνιστρια, να βιωσεις τον πονο της απωλειας τον οποιο σωματοποιει κυριολεκτικα(ως body artist) και ο οποιος απειλει να την εξαφανισει.τρομακτικα ωμο και μυστηριωδες.μου δημιουργησε ενα αισθημα ιλιγγου..χωρις αμφιβολια ο Delillo ειναι εξαιρετικος στο να δημιουργει ωμα συναισθηματα με το χειρισμο των λεξεων που επιλεγει. 3.5 αστερια!!
"..τοτε βλεπει τον εαυτο της να σερνεται προς το μερος του.εχει την εικονα μπροστα στα ματια της.σερνεται με τα 4 στο πατωμα και της φαινεται τοσο αληθινο, σαν να συμβαινει.αισθανεται να εχει αποσπαστει μαλακα και βλεπει οτι προσπαθει να τον τραβηξει κατω στο πατωμα μαζι της, να τον σταματησει, να τον κρατησει εδω, ή οτι σκαρφαλωνει πανω του, οτι διαλυεται και χωνεται μεσα του ή απλως οτι μενει μπρουμυτα στο πατωμα και ξεσπαει σε ασταματητους λυγμους ενω ο εαυτος της την κοιτάζει απο ψηλα."
March 18, 2020
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 shades vastly different colours into a single, bare word - 'ao'.
no, it isn't an anomaly - their 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 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.
no, it isn't an anomaly - their 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 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.
June 8, 2017
Es admirable la capacidad que tiene DeLillo para hacer vibrar el interior del lector. Con su prosa precisa, como si de un bisturí se tratase, nos muestra de manera clara algunas de las cosas de la vida diaria, de las que sabemos su existencia pero no sabemos explicar con palabras, y que él nos describe de forma deslumbrante. Sólo conozco a otro escritor capaz de hacer los mismo, y es David Foster Wallace.
No es que haya leído muchos libros de DeLillo, de hecho estoy empezando a conocerlo, y no acaba de convencerme todo lo que escribe. Tengo pendientes sus obras más importantes y espero que me gusten mucho más. Y es que con DeLillo tengo un problema, sus primeros capítulos son tan extraordinarios que después espero lo mismo de la parte central de la obra, y me llevo una desilusión al no encontrarlo. Eso sí, en el capítulo final siempre reencuentro la genialidad del principio. Y el desarrollo de la novela no es que sea malo, incluso te encuentras con momentos brillantes, pero lo encuentro demasiado embrollado, como un rompecabezas del que sólo él posee la muestra con la que guiarse, dejándote a ti, pobre lector, a ciegas. Es de esos autores de los que parece que te pierdas algo y no puedes disfrutarlos a fondo.
La historia de 'Body Art' empieza con una pareja, Lauren y Rey, llevando a cabo las típicas cosas que se hacen durante el desayuno. Y DeLillo nos lo cuenta de manera impresionante y minuciosa, casi de forma minimalista. Mientras ellos siguen con la parafernalia de cada mañana, mantienen una conversación en la que se deja entrever un misterio. Aunque más que conversación parece que cada uno esté pensando en sus asuntos, sin apenas atender al otro. Tras esta escena, nos enteramos de un hecho decisivo para la vida de Lauren. Posteriormente le sucederá algo que volverá a trastocar su mundo, y que te deja con la mosca detrás de la oreja sobre lo que realmente está sucediendo. Y precisamente aquí es donde más floja me parece la historia.
Pero esto no es óbice para no leer esta novela, llena de instantes y de significados brillantes. DeLillo siempre tiene algo que contar, y por eso me parece interesante.
No es que haya leído muchos libros de DeLillo, de hecho estoy empezando a conocerlo, y no acaba de convencerme todo lo que escribe. Tengo pendientes sus obras más importantes y espero que me gusten mucho más. Y es que con DeLillo tengo un problema, sus primeros capítulos son tan extraordinarios que después espero lo mismo de la parte central de la obra, y me llevo una desilusión al no encontrarlo. Eso sí, en el capítulo final siempre reencuentro la genialidad del principio. Y el desarrollo de la novela no es que sea malo, incluso te encuentras con momentos brillantes, pero lo encuentro demasiado embrollado, como un rompecabezas del que sólo él posee la muestra con la que guiarse, dejándote a ti, pobre lector, a ciegas. Es de esos autores de los que parece que te pierdas algo y no puedes disfrutarlos a fondo.
La historia de 'Body Art' empieza con una pareja, Lauren y Rey, llevando a cabo las típicas cosas que se hacen durante el desayuno. Y DeLillo nos lo cuenta de manera impresionante y minuciosa, casi de forma minimalista. Mientras ellos siguen con la parafernalia de cada mañana, mantienen una conversación en la que se deja entrever un misterio. Aunque más que conversación parece que cada uno esté pensando en sus asuntos, sin apenas atender al otro. Tras esta escena, nos enteramos de un hecho decisivo para la vida de Lauren. Posteriormente le sucederá algo que volverá a trastocar su mundo, y que te deja con la mosca detrás de la oreja sobre lo que realmente está sucediendo. Y precisamente aquí es donde más floja me parece la historia.
Pero esto no es óbice para no leer esta novela, llena de instantes y de significados brillantes. DeLillo siempre tiene algo que contar, y por eso me parece interesante.
August 22, 2019
DeLillo is a wordsmith.
I'm one of those people who has no problem whatsoever with plotless books. Give me a bunch of interesting characters, and blow me away with beautiful, lyrical writing. I'm all game for such stuff.
The book has some exceptional writing. The repetitions (which I've come to believe is a must for writers,like DeLillo, who love to write satire), shape the tonality of the novel.
The opening breakfast scene is brilliant and the book held my attention for most of the part. But the final few pages though. I still admit I can't say in all honesty I understand the novel. Right after finishing it, I went through few summary notes online, and yes, they do comply with my interpretation of the novel. But I'm sure there is more depth to it than what my teeny tiny brain can stomach/fathom.
I'm happy to know this isn't this man's best work. Because I already own Underworld, White Noise and Americana. I'll be bummed if someone told me this is his masterpiece.
Great writing, but can't really say I loved it.
I'm one of those people who has no problem whatsoever with plotless books. Give me a bunch of interesting characters, and blow me away with beautiful, lyrical writing. I'm all game for such stuff.
The book has some exceptional writing. The repetitions (which I've come to believe is a must for writers,like DeLillo, who love to write satire), shape the tonality of the novel.
The opening breakfast scene is brilliant and the book held my attention for most of the part. But the final few pages though. I still admit I can't say in all honesty I understand the novel. Right after finishing it, I went through few summary notes online, and yes, they do comply with my interpretation of the novel. But I'm sure there is more depth to it than what my teeny tiny brain can stomach/fathom.
I'm happy to know this isn't this man's best work. Because I already own Underworld, White Noise and Americana. I'll be bummed if someone told me this is his masterpiece.
Great writing, but can't really say I loved it.
December 9, 2023
The Body Artist starts off with a very ordinary scene of a married couple in a kitchen making breakfast. The husband is a film director, the wife an artist.
Every action is magnified, thoroughly describing their actions, words, the process of the morning's routine.
It's excessively exacting, the day-to-day and trivial are dramatised to highlight the tragedy that soon follows. After the husband's suicide the artist is plunged into grief: of detachment, of a sunken despair that contorts reality.
A brief read at just over 130 pages, and full of DeLillo's trademark questioning into what makes us human, and how the boundaries between our many realities are in fact paper thin.
Every action is magnified, thoroughly describing their actions, words, the process of the morning's routine.
It's excessively exacting, the day-to-day and trivial are dramatised to highlight the tragedy that soon follows. After the husband's suicide the artist is plunged into grief: of detachment, of a sunken despair that contorts reality.
A brief read at just over 130 pages, and full of DeLillo's trademark questioning into what makes us human, and how the boundaries between our many realities are in fact paper thin.
November 5, 2020
I wasn't impressed with the last DeLillo book I read (Point Omega). And I sure as hell wasn't impressed with this one.
'The Body Artist' starts off with a breakfast. A breakfast between a woman and her husband in their home. A breakfast that runs on for TWENTY-SIX PAGES. Twenty-six pages of repetitive writing, navel-gazing, and viewing the mundane under a microscope to make up for the fact that nothing much actually happens... I mean, Christ, the book is only 128 pages in total, and we get to spend almost a fifth of it on breakfast. If the pace of a story is important to you, you'll be bouncing your face off a brick wall right at the beginning.
From there on the book gets a little better. The husband kills himself, the woman grieves in her own odd way, and a mysterious stranger suddenly appears in the house who is not quite human in the traditional sense. The encounters between the woman and the stranger bring into question the concepts of time, space, ability, and memory. The possibility of the stranger being something spectral, alien, time-traveling, or mentally handicapped are pondered. With these somewhat intriguing, eerie, and odd additives to the story, 'The Body Artist' is able to hold your attention just enough to make it to the end. And by the end you'll probably feel like you should like the book a lot more than you actually do... because of the author's pedigree.
We all know what DeLillo is trying to do. He fancies himself a performer of "High Art" with the written word. And in the world of High Art, if you have the clout, you can piss on a piece of canvas and have others declare it brilliant while simultaneously suggesting that anyone pissed off (pun intended) by your performance is just not smart enough to "get it".
Oh, I get it. Hell, DeLillo actually goes as far as putting this little lesson in High Art on the page for us all to see in a small segue where a writer interviews The Body Artist and reviews her performance art and blatantly states that people who found the "High Art" boring as fuck and intolerable were "missing out". Well, I have to be honest. Despite understanding all the depths the author was trying to mine out of this tale, part of me sure wishes I'd missed out. Apparently, pretentiousness is worth a whole lot more to DeLillo than any semblance of plot or pace.
But another part of me got a little something something (if you've read the story, you'll know that's a pun) out of this book. The writing is surreal; intimate at times, coldly detached at others. I didn't dig too much of it, but sometimes DeLillo's writing hit's the mark, making it hard to forget. There are particular ideas and scenes that stuck with me too. It's also mercifully short. For that, I'll grant 'The Body Artist' two stars.
'The Body Artist' starts off with a breakfast. A breakfast between a woman and her husband in their home. A breakfast that runs on for TWENTY-SIX PAGES. Twenty-six pages of repetitive writing, navel-gazing, and viewing the mundane under a microscope to make up for the fact that nothing much actually happens... I mean, Christ, the book is only 128 pages in total, and we get to spend almost a fifth of it on breakfast. If the pace of a story is important to you, you'll be bouncing your face off a brick wall right at the beginning.
From there on the book gets a little better. The husband kills himself, the woman grieves in her own odd way, and a mysterious stranger suddenly appears in the house who is not quite human in the traditional sense. The encounters between the woman and the stranger bring into question the concepts of time, space, ability, and memory. The possibility of the stranger being something spectral, alien, time-traveling, or mentally handicapped are pondered. With these somewhat intriguing, eerie, and odd additives to the story, 'The Body Artist' is able to hold your attention just enough to make it to the end. And by the end you'll probably feel like you should like the book a lot more than you actually do... because of the author's pedigree.
We all know what DeLillo is trying to do. He fancies himself a performer of "High Art" with the written word. And in the world of High Art, if you have the clout, you can piss on a piece of canvas and have others declare it brilliant while simultaneously suggesting that anyone pissed off (pun intended) by your performance is just not smart enough to "get it".
Oh, I get it. Hell, DeLillo actually goes as far as putting this little lesson in High Art on the page for us all to see in a small segue where a writer interviews The Body Artist and reviews her performance art and blatantly states that people who found the "High Art" boring as fuck and intolerable were "missing out". Well, I have to be honest. Despite understanding all the depths the author was trying to mine out of this tale, part of me sure wishes I'd missed out. Apparently, pretentiousness is worth a whole lot more to DeLillo than any semblance of plot or pace.
But another part of me got a little something something (if you've read the story, you'll know that's a pun) out of this book. The writing is surreal; intimate at times, coldly detached at others. I didn't dig too much of it, but sometimes DeLillo's writing hit's the mark, making it hard to forget. There are particular ideas and scenes that stuck with me too. It's also mercifully short. For that, I'll grant 'The Body Artist' two stars.
September 13, 2011
I hesitated as I was rating since I technically didn't finish the book. Most of the time the fact that I didn't complete a book is enough for me to give it 2 stars or less, but this is also significant because it's under 130 pages and I was actually in a patient enough mood for postmodernism.
If you ask me what The Body Artist is about, I cam tell you about 4 things.
1) The main couple lives in a house
2) They eat human food, I think it was cereal, or maybe toast
3) They walk around the house a lot
4) Someone dies, then something happens
This sums up my relationship with DeLillo. I never understand what's going on, yet somehow I don't feel confused or bored. Half way through and I still couldn't describe the protagonist other than her being 'some sort of living organism because she consumes toast and is written with a gender specific third person pronoun'. DeLillo manages to spawn paragraphs after paragraphs of laconic prose riddled with non-place specific locality without making me realise it as I read. It's like trying to taste water while you drink it, only without trying.
So what kept me interested? Well, whatever compelled me to finish White Noise. Honestly, he can title his books White Noise 1 and White Noise 2 and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Ok maybe I'm being mean, Libra was pretty fun and has characters that do more than eat cereal.
If you ask me what The Body Artist is about, I cam tell you about 4 things.
1) The main couple lives in a house
2) They eat human food, I think it was cereal, or maybe toast
3) They walk around the house a lot
4) Someone dies, then something happens
This sums up my relationship with DeLillo. I never understand what's going on, yet somehow I don't feel confused or bored. Half way through and I still couldn't describe the protagonist other than her being 'some sort of living organism because she consumes toast and is written with a gender specific third person pronoun'. DeLillo manages to spawn paragraphs after paragraphs of laconic prose riddled with non-place specific locality without making me realise it as I read. It's like trying to taste water while you drink it, only without trying.
So what kept me interested? Well, whatever compelled me to finish White Noise. Honestly, he can title his books White Noise 1 and White Noise 2 and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Ok maybe I'm being mean, Libra was pretty fun and has characters that do more than eat cereal.
October 11, 2022
“When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.”
Okay, here's the thing: the writing was perfect, and the story itself was interesting, HOWEVER, I didn't connect with it one bit and kept getting distracted.
Maybe I was just not in the right mood for this.
Okay, here's the thing: the writing was perfect, and the story itself was interesting, HOWEVER, I didn't connect with it one bit and kept getting distracted.
Maybe I was just not in the right mood for this.
June 2, 2015
Que queria Don DeLillo contar com este livro?
Por mais que eu esprema os miolos não me sai absolutamente nada...
Imaginem que recebem de presente algo embrulhado em colorido papel de seda e com uns laçarotes preciosos. Entusiasmados, abrem-no e deparam-se com várias pecinhas de Lego:
- um homem, uma mulher e uma catrefada de apetrechos e ingredientes de pequeno almoço;
- uma mulher a fazer contorcionismo;
- uma pistola e um morto;
- uma casa e um carro;
- um bonequito que parece um rapaz e que acaba desaparecido, enrolado no papel e nos laços;
- e mais umas quantas peças sem instruções de montagem...
E vocês, embora decepcionados e confusos, tentam unir as peças em algo que vos faça sentido. Mas, impotentes, concluem que vos deram uma prenda da qual não tiram qualquer proveito.
Será que isto é Arte (muito moderna) e por isso eu não entendo?
"Um homem, parado no meio de uma galeria de arte, deixa que um outro lhe aponte uma arma de fogo e lhe dispare contra um braço. Isto é arte. Uma mulher pinta quadros com a vagina. Isto é arte. Um homem e uma mulher, nus, lançam-se de cabeça um contra o outro, repetidas vezes, a uma velocidade cada vez maior. Isto é arte, sexo e agressão. Um homem vestido com peças de roupa interior feminina ensanguentadas amontoa uma enorme quantidade de carne picada. Isto é arte, sexo, agressão, critica cultural e autenticidade. Um homem crava pregos no pénis. Isto é apenas autenticidade."
(Página 105)
Da mesma forma que não entendo porque a construção artística dos pregos não é arte e o resto já é. Se conseguir perceber este pequeno pormenor talvez consiga montar as peças de O Corpo Enquanto Arte...talvez...
Por mais que eu esprema os miolos não me sai absolutamente nada...
Imaginem que recebem de presente algo embrulhado em colorido papel de seda e com uns laçarotes preciosos. Entusiasmados, abrem-no e deparam-se com várias pecinhas de Lego:
- um homem, uma mulher e uma catrefada de apetrechos e ingredientes de pequeno almoço;
- uma mulher a fazer contorcionismo;
- uma pistola e um morto;
- uma casa e um carro;
- um bonequito que parece um rapaz e que acaba desaparecido, enrolado no papel e nos laços;
- e mais umas quantas peças sem instruções de montagem...
E vocês, embora decepcionados e confusos, tentam unir as peças em algo que vos faça sentido. Mas, impotentes, concluem que vos deram uma prenda da qual não tiram qualquer proveito.
Será que isto é Arte (muito moderna) e por isso eu não entendo?
"Um homem, parado no meio de uma galeria de arte, deixa que um outro lhe aponte uma arma de fogo e lhe dispare contra um braço. Isto é arte. Uma mulher pinta quadros com a vagina. Isto é arte. Um homem e uma mulher, nus, lançam-se de cabeça um contra o outro, repetidas vezes, a uma velocidade cada vez maior. Isto é arte, sexo e agressão. Um homem vestido com peças de roupa interior feminina ensanguentadas amontoa uma enorme quantidade de carne picada. Isto é arte, sexo, agressão, critica cultural e autenticidade. Um homem crava pregos no pénis. Isto é apenas autenticidade."
(Página 105)
Da mesma forma que não entendo porque a construção artística dos pregos não é arte e o resto já é. Se conseguir perceber este pequeno pormenor talvez consiga montar as peças de O Corpo Enquanto Arte...talvez...
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