Rating: 
Summary: Read it in the bookstore.
Review: Imagine this: you buy a ticket to a movie made by one of your favorite directors, costs you 22 bucks, you fork out money for popcorn, a coke, some granola bars - or whatever - and you came super early to get the best seat in the theater. Very quickly the place fills up, the lights go down and the movie begins. A plot starts to unfold. It's looking like a really great piece of work. Maybe one of his best. But the movie ends. The lights go up and everyone leaves. And you're still sitting there chewing on that first handful of popcorn. Haven't even touched your coke. Your seat hasn't even warmed up yet. What flashed before your eyes was maybe some the greatest 16 seconds of film you've ever seen in your life. Maybe not. It all happened so fast, it was hard to tell. But one thing's for sure: you're out of money. You're out of money and here they come already, Hoovering up the aisle...
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh! Pretentious silly nonsense
Review: I read a lot of literature, of many different varieties, and judge this book to be in that same self-important class of deconstructionist **** that includes Endgame by Thomas a Beckett. I bought this on a whim as an audiobook on CD, and found the general stream-of-consciousness and lack of plot so mind numbing it almost put me to sleep at the wheel. If it wasn't for my overall irritation at having wasted money on the purchase keeping me awake, I probably would have plowed into another car. This is an awful, plotless, plodding horror.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit of a spooky one
Review: I enjoyed the fact that the novel was so short, as it presented a nice, easy read to fill up the time before going out. Although I did enjoy the novel, I did feel a lack of resolution evident, and I couldn't help but think that Lauren had imagined the entire thing. It's a good book though, so read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Short and tedious
Review: This book is over my head. "White Noise" is one of the greatest books I've read. This novella is no "White Noise." It has a tedious stream-of-conciousness vibe to it. After it was done, I forget about it. You will too. Buy "White Noise."
Rating:
Summary: yes, it is a short novel.
Review: The thing everyone wants to talk about with this book, or story is that it is short. Yes it is short, and frankly so what! Old Man and the Sea were short, Heart of Darkness was short, and the Great Gatsby was also on the short side. The thought of people who feel somehow cheated by not having the 350 pages to go through for the price of a cover is well, a bit ignorant. If what you look for is length, you should go to your nearest airport, pluck off whatever 400 pages happen to constitute the bestseller of the moment. The thing of it is, this is a story about two massive topics, time and death. The fact that Delillo is able to do something with both topics in under 130 pages is a testament to his ability, not a shortcoming. Also, for those of you who feel you should get more pages for the buck, read it twice, or appreciate that you got so many pages at Underworld for a bargain basement price. This is not the kind of book you read in a waiting room, while your kid gets his flu shot. It is something to read and think about, much like a painting. When is the last time someone looked at a great oil painting, and said "well jeez, if it was on a bigger canvas I could put it over my couch." Not all books are written for a distraction. With that said, The Body Artist is a very interesting story about a performance artist dealing with the suicide of her husband. It is well written, and has a few moments that will resonate in your head for some time. Give it a chance, and if you are broke, or refuse to pay the price of a hardback for such a short story, wait on the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: I dunno
Review: I probably wouldn't have got it if it wasn't for having a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and since I plowed all the way through Underworld, which, having done so I regard as one of the greatest books of my life. The fella upstairs there, oddly, I spent several years with a man, autistic, who parroted his father yelling at him on the other side of the door where he was locked for 30 years. He did this for a few weeks when he was taken off his meds, otherwise the man spoke hardly at all. The voice and inflection was perfect for his dead father, a wicked old cuss. But anyways that rang true to me, and I guess the book began to mean something to me after that, something about words just really hanging out there in the air.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Shift of Voice, and a Brilliant One
Review: The ironic thing about people's negative or lukewarm criticism of DeLillo's THE BODY ARTIST is that for almost thirty years the author has satirized the very culture that now takes umbrage at being more or less left out of it. The blatant ironies are more subtle here, and yet a work on a small canvas is no less riveting: DeLillo is simply no writing what people are used to from him, such as the lists in WHITE NOISE or the allusions to and indictments of popular American culture in his other works.Now over 60, DeLillo has the insight to see that the Culture has now caught up, in Real Time, with his parodic treatment of middle-class suburban America. This feeling is also present in UNDERWORLD, which is set at mid-20th century, but it's far too easy to see a short novel as a reaction to the tendency toward BLEAK HOUSE-length tomes of five years ago. It is another voice entirely, one DeLillo has always flirted with in sections of all his novels, but never allowed to become the dominant Voice. THE BODY ARTIST is every bit as surreal as "vintage" DeLillo and, if you wish, as apocalyptic. Yet it is rather pointless to compare the work with WHITE NOISE or MAO II or even UNDERWORLD. It is the story of the most profound apocalypse: the internal, personal one. DeLillo shares a certain vector or vision with Carver, Cheever, and even Kafka in this sense, yet the work is still distinctly his own. THE BODY ARTIST has been criticized for DeLillo's "sentimentality." Let's make an important distinction--the characters feel things deeply, edging toward insanity in their own isolation. DeLillo, however, pulls off an astounding flight of horrible, lyrical beauty in this book, a downright HAUNTING fluidity of descriptive prose that is so masterful it makes WHITE NOISE look like the abrasive sarcasm of an insufferable child. Don DeLillo is, quite honestly, a much better writer than I ever really thought he was. He was clever and witty, sometimes profound--but rarely empathetic. And with THE BODY ARTIST, he enters another aspect of humanity, a place where what we fear the most doesn't come from without but from within: not the fear of death, but the reality of it. He goes for not the brain but the soul. And he arrives. No, I doubt you'll be entertained--you'll be emotionally pummeled by this book's implications. And so long as someone can face head-on what DeLillo does here and WRITE it, well, my regret is not that THE BODY ARTIST is not WHITE NOISE. My regret is that I am not as good as Don DeLillo.
Rating:
Summary: "Playing with our Minds"
Review: This is the first DeLillo book I have read and find my self at a loss for words. This is not an easy book to read and I think that DeLillo is playing tricks with our minds. He must be a good writer because I couldn't stop reading this small book (novel?) until I got to the end in one sitting. You really have to concentrate on every line that he writes. There is so much thought and information in each line. I found myself reading over entire paragraphs twice. I believe this book should be read more than once for many reasons. After Lauren Hartke's husband kills himself she is confronted with day to day living, her wondering thoughts, and the fear of being left behind. It's like listening to someone who is in a trance, struggling through her every moment of the day. Lauren's discovery of a boy in the house who speaks like Rey and also knows Rey's last words & thoughts is truly mind-boggling for her. Is he really Rey reincarnated, or a ghost, or maybe just her imagination? Did I really enjoy this book? Yes. Do I really know what happened? I'm still not sure I know the truth. I like a book that makes you think, and keeps you wondering about it long after you're done reading it. Don DeLillo has written a book that I am certain will be a best seller.
Rating:
Summary: An intriguing little novel
Review: THE BODY ARTIST, with its spare prose and even sparer plot, is really more of a novella than a true novel, but what's in a label? DeLillo has created an unusual story, a twisting of time and reality, of what we know of ourselves and the people we love. Lauren Hardke, the body artist of the title, barely knows her husband Rey before he kills himself shortly after the novel begins. Lauren is left with nothing but thin memories and a rented house in which they spent most of their brief marriage. In the midst of her grief, an inarticulate, almost androgenous stranger mysteriously appears in the house, and through him Lauren begins to retrieve the daily life she shared with Rey. DeLillo has an inimitable style that draws the reader into half-finished thoughts and sentences with an eloquence that stuns. In 124 pages, he manages to connect love with art, inarticulateness with reality, fragments with life. Although I read this slight book in a couple of hours, DeLillo has packed much into a few pages. Casual readers might be disappointed with the lack of plot and resolution, but others will be delighted with DeLillo's testing of the boundaries of fiction.
Rating:
Summary: DREAMSCAPE
Review: Following his thunderous "Underworld"--in my opinion, one of the greatest novels ever written--DeLillo has chosen a much more quiet work. "Underworld" tackled 50 years in American culture, weaving together scores of plots and themes into a rich, nuanced, intricate, organic novel. Somehow, he made everything fit togther as though it were made to. "The Body Artist" is an entirely different animal. It's small and narrow, simple and lean. It's dreamlike, where his other works are largly discursive, fragile where they are hulking, minimal where they are grand, meek where they roar. Clearly, he didn't want any comparisons between the two novels... "The Body Artist" is a slim novel (novella?) featuring a woman--an obscure artist of some stripe, with allusions to Kafka's Hunger Artist--who's left with a rented house and the death of a man she was seeing. Another man--a waistrel, a seemingly simple-headed drifter--floats into the house and commands her fascination. Plot, characterization, dramatic structure, dialogue. These elements take a back seat to mood, texture, tone, atmosphere. It recalls the work of Arthur Schnitzler and Mario Vargas Llosa. This isn't a masterwork, but it's worth reading.
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