Review of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

I’m about to show off how a real book blogger does it.

The author’s name escapes me as I sit here, but there is one, a famous one from the early 20th century, you know that guy whose name I can’t remember, who said something to the effect “Fiction which does not concern itself with life and death is pointless”. I paraphrase, mightily, but you get the idea. Stories themed beyond mortality do not address the burning question of life, and are therefore of lesser quality. If there is any late 20th century writer who has taken this to heart, it’s Don DeLillo. (Cormac McCarthy also, but this is a DeLillo review, natch.) In his 2001 novel/novella The Body Artist, he brings the idea front and center through the eyes of a performing artist.

The Body Artist is the story of a few months in the life of Lauren Hartke. Married to the famous film director Rey Robles, the story opens with the couple in a quiet but sublimely tense scene over breakfast. More happening than the simple details of toast and coffee, in the next scene, Robles is found dead of suicide in his ex-wife’s apartment. Hartke withdrawing from the world afterwards, she finds solace in an isolated life, that is, until a man reveals himself in the attic one day. Forced to care for the man, Hartke’s life changes directions yet again.

There is an argument to be made that The Body Artist is a ghost story. Undoubtedly DeLillo would not want to be associated with that corpus of fiction, but technically the argument is correct. (Psst, Don, it’s a literary ghost story.) Regardless of device or plot, Hartke’s humanity is front and center throughout the short novel. DeLillo spending a lot of time inside Hartke’s body, her senses, particularly touch, are where the “thoughts and emotions” flow through her situation. Patrick Swayze does not live here.

As with most DeLillo novels, the style of The Body Artist will either be the greatest turn on or turn off. The story cold on the surface, it’s punctuated by changes in mode—first person, second person, third person, as well as random bursts of realia. For readers who invest themselves in the interstices of story authors provide, DeLillo offers a feast, however. Much is written between the minimalist lines, and as with any “literary ghost story”, its where the novel’s substance is also found.

In the end, The Body Artist is a short but deeply sensual look into loss and self-understanding. The central conceit is not the most innovative; it’s been done many times before, but DeLillo imbues the narrative with his signature gravitas which allows the story to transcend its conceits, but will also be the litmus test whether readers buy into the telling.