The Body Artist

This is a successful tone piece — an extended daydream that drifts skillfully from finely chiseled observations to ethereal reveries skirting the mystical. The plot is minimal, so don't expect much in the way of drama, but there is one twist near the end worth waiting for that flips the point-of-view to the other side of the mirror and serves as an effective reveal.

DeLillo is a great experimenter. He clearly enjoys reordering the most common words in ways that ask you to reconsider their meaning. And by creating a character who, we're told, exists outside of time and circumstance, he sets himself the challenge of using language to communicate thoughts that don't know how to be formed. DeLillo, in other words, wants us to hear what language would be like if generated by a mind that can only reflect and not produce thought. It works, in that respect. That doesn't make the experience scintillating, but for those who appreciate witnessing a great literary scientist in the lab, it's worth a read.