Rating: 
Summary: A master of life
Review: If you read Michiko Kakutani's review of this novel in the New York Times, pretend that the moment did not happen. Open the book, smell the pages, read the words. Go home alone. Turn off the phone. Settle yourself in to your own body, your own mind, your own life. Realize that you are alone. Now read the book.To compare this novel to Mao II or Libra is not only completely beside the point, it is insulting. Don Delillo is an artist who does not repeat himself. He is like Miles Davis - you can hear a note of Miles on a radio or in a bar, and you KNOW that it's Miles. You can read a sentence of Delillo AND IMMEDIATELY KNOW that it's Delillo. HOWEVER, every book he has written is different. He is not afraid to explore whatever worms its way into - or out of - his consciousness. He is one of the bravest artists I have encountered. With The Body Artist, he is very brave indeed. Many people who read (or pretend to have read) Underworld - which is one of the great books of the last century - will not like this book. And I'll tell you why right now - they do not want to think about death. They do not want to think about the ultimate isolation of human beings. We are alone. End of story. End of sentence. End of thought. Period. Delillo has not only written one of the most beautiful and haunting books you will ever read; he has managed to do it and still capture the living rhythms of human speech and thought in a way that makes me shake my head in wonder, and laugh out loud, and weep - OVER A BOOK. Read this book. It is important. It will change your life. And if it doesn't - then you need to listen more closely to the beating of your own heart.
Rating:
Summary: The truth behind our realities
Review: I've had a chance to read the first chapter of Body Artist, and can only comment on it. I have read many other DeLillo novels as well. DeLillo is, to me, a master of depicting the daily realities of our 21st century lives in a way that makes me - when examing my own days - feel rather foolish much of the time. The truncated conversations, the shifting of focus, the entering and exiting of relevant and irrelevant thoughts at a seemingly random pace and order are all on display in chapter 1. The prose is infectious and the dialogue so real it can be irritating, not to a fault of DeLillo's, but in the same way that participating in or overhearing such conversations would irritate me if I was actually there. And that to me is why DeLillo is the most powerful writer. He brings me into the moment, and depicts our modern condition and psyche with unwavering clarity and realism. When I read Pafko at the Wall in Harper's Magazine years ago (my first exposure to DeLillo) that is part of what caught me, and DeLillo continues to amaze.
Rating: 
Summary: A world away from "Underworld"
Review: In his follow up to the bestseller "Underworld," Don DeLillo has made a 180 degree turn from an 800+ page epic to almost a novella of starting power and masterful language. If your only experience of DeLillo is "Underworld" you may be better served by indulging yourself in earlier DeLillo works ("White Noise," "Great Jones Street," or his masterpiece, "Libra") before assuming the task of "The Body Artist." Although the novel is concise, and relatively short by DeLillo's standards, it is a challenging piece on every level, almost daring you to continue turning the pages. "The Body Artist" shows DeLillo has matured as a writer since the overwhelming success of "Underworld" but that he has not found his niche so to speak. This is DeLillo at his most experimental, but at the same time brief and articulate, carefully managing his sentences for maximum effect. There is not a wasted word on the page. I would be surprised if this book is as successful as "Underworld." But I am happy to see that DeLillo is willing to sacrifice commercial successes for his development as an artist. "The Body Artist" is certain to be on many year end best lists and may even garner serveral awards. A satisfying change of pace, a challenging read.
Rating: 
Summary: Delillo double-bogey
Review: This is not meant to be helpful; rather it's meant to express my distaste for this Delillo offering. The Body Artist is one of the most artsy, pretentious novels I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly Odd
Review: Disclamer: I've never read any other DeLillo books. I typically enjoy novelists like Stephen King, Jim Butcher and Neil Gaiman. I picked this up because (1) I am a graphic artist and enjoy books on other artists, (2) it simply sounded interesting. I just finished reading it for the second time, which was necessary. Some people may call this book pretentious; I don't think it is at all, though some of the characters may rub people that way. It's experimental, sure, but this book is, itself, a work of art and either hits you dead on or misses you by a mile. This book hit me dead on. The discussions within about "high art," might leave people going "This is so wonky; how can they call this art?" That isn't the point. It isn't whether or not you like Lauren's art--it's not even so much that you like Lauren--it's that you really do need to look deeply into this book to like it and, if you do, you love it. A very intellectually stimulating read, definantly something to keep on the shelf and read over and over again.
Rating: 
Summary: The word for bullcrap is bullcrap
Review: Shashank Tripathi said: "Who is this quaint stranger--unwilling time traveler?"
That's what Tuttle turns out to be. An unwilling time-traveler. Because I came across the following revelation in an interview that Don did with Michael Silverblatt:
"This character lives in time as it truly exists. Einstein said time is a fiction. And by that, I think what he meant is that our perception of time is not a genuine description of the way in which the structure of time exists in the universe around us. And this man, Mr. Tuttle, it seems to me, lives in time in an unprotected way. He's not able to protect himself as we do thru our misperception of the nature of time. It's the only way we can live. He can barely live. He can't speak clearly. He moves in a jerky sort of manner. He's totally lost in the world. Which could only mean that he is in the real world. Not in the world we have built with our self-protective mechanisms. We don't know what the universe is truly like. This is my reading of what certain scientists, certain cosmologists, seem to be saying. So my idea was simply to try to imagine a character in this terrible dilemma. One of the things he seems to be able to do is to move forward and backward in time. Although he certainly doesn't do this willingly. And I'm not quite sure if he does it physically or not."
And I'm not quite sure if the above-mentioned subject-matter is something that DeLillo should even have written about. Maybe it should've been left to Philip Dick and company. Nevertheless, I was impressed by a lot of the prose. Including the following passage that takes Nabokov's "squashed squirrel" alliteration non-joke and improves upon it: "The dead squirrel you see in the driveway, dead and decapitated, turns out to be a strip of curled burlap, but you look at it, you walk past it, even so, with a mixed tinge of terror and pity. Because it was lonely."
Rating: 
Summary: DeLillo's Body Artist Is A Disapointment
Review: Don DeLillo followed his massive 800-plus page Underworld with this slim novel about Lauren Hartke, a woman who discovers a mysterious stranger in the remote summer home she is renting. It is easy to imagine that DeLillo was exhausted after his tour de force, and that The Body Artist was little more than an exercise for him, a pallet cleanser, something of a different tone and a different scope. Unfortunately for his readers, what might have been fun for him to write is not fun for us to read. The writing is spare. The words sit heavily on the page, resisting joining the other words in the sentence, and the sentences avoid the sentences that follow. Each thought seems so distinct, so definite, that it's hard to hold onto any of them, and I often found myself rereading the sentences in order to catch the meaning. The best way to describe the prose is in DeLillo's own words, as "an act of floating poetry....How strange the discontinuity. It seemed a quantum hop, one word to the next." The fact that DeLillo describes his own writing within the book suggests that the awkwardness was deliberate, but just because it was done consciously doesn't mean that it's good. I wanted more of the truths that I have come to expect from DeLillo, and not just ambiance. When Lauren finally seems to have an emotional breakthrough, the reader hasn't been given enough material to follow her there. We are left wondering, has anything actually happened? If you are interested in reading DeLillo, read White Noise and save The Body Artist for when you are such a fan that you want to have read everything he has ever published.
Rating:
Summary: Hated it.
Review: I really loved the premise. I was fascinated about it. I think it would make a wonderful movie or play. It was a quick read and held my attention. I really would like to see the whole premise even taken farther. I was a bit dissapointed that we didn't focus on "Mr. Tuttle" more - I could've read about him even more.
Rating:
Summary: A good book for some
Review: I can honestly say this is one of the worst books I've ever read. It is poorly written, excruciatingly boring and proof-positive that a big name can get anything published. The only redeeming feature of this book is that it is a mere 124 pages in length. The jacket description isn't even close to accurate unless by "spare and seductive" they meant spare on entertainment and that it seduces you to sleep. I'm going to give some of DeLillo's other work a chance because of the rave reviews I've read. This however, is not the place to start investigating his work.
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