'BODY ARTIST' | A review DeLillo's latest reaffirms his genius

The book is on a smaller scale than his previous works.
By ROB STOUT
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
"The Body Artist," by Don DeLillo (Scribner $22.00).
Don DeLillo again sets out to prove that with a great writer, no matter what the subject matter or size, anything is possible.
If one were to look at only a portion of his previous work -- "White Noise," "Libra," "Mao II" or 1998's wrist-spraining "Underworld" -- then the appearance of a spare 124-page novella will take many unsuspecting readers by surprise.
From the first pages, it is apparent DeLillo has left the larger literary canvases he has become so accustomed to for the isolation of a beach house on a lonely stretch of coastline. Initially, its inhabitants are a nameless couple whose morning tedium is observed in acute detail for roughly one quarter of the book, as we wonder just where we are being led.
She washes some blueberries, he reads the paper, they drink coffee together, he listens for a weather report. Car keys are lost, then found. In fact, it is not until this perfectly written piece of bland domesticity is shattered by his suicide later that morning do we discover their identities: She is Lauren Hartke, the performance artist of the title, and he was Rey Robles, a Spanish-born film director who drives to his ex-wife's Manhattan apartment to kill himself.
Internal elaboration: Whereas "Underworld" exploded textually with everything that had touched American culture during the last half decade courtesy of Bobby Thomson's 1951 World Series home run, "The Body Artist" also seeks its own similar grand elaboration, but one that occurs within Lauren's darkened world after the shock of Rey's death.
As with all of DeLillo's conflicts, Lauren's life has become a chain of events no less encompassing than those set into motion by the path of Thomson's baseball, or the paranoia that followed JFK's limousine out of Dealy Plaza in "Libra."
During her hermit-like seclusion in the beach house, she hears, and eventually discovers, the existence of a man, "smallish and fine-bodied," living in her attic and who, upon first contact, seemed "roused from a deep sleep, or medicated maybe."
She nicknames him Mr. Tuttle, her former high school science teacher, and after dismissing him as an escapee from a local institution, comes to recognize his memorization of long ago conversations between herself and Rey. She is at first intimidated, then fascinated, and finally comforted by his capacity to mimic Rey's voice and inflections in strange, unpredictable bursts.
"Tell me something," she whispers and Mr. Tuttle does so, repeating Rey's remarks about the missing car keys as if it had happened moments ago.
Lauren's return from grieving widow to her role as performance artist is DeLillo's last challenge in the limited space of the work. To accomplish this sleight of hand, only in the final pages does Mr. Tuttle's ability bring DeLillo's seemingly pointless opening scene into perspective.
Transformation: After re-examining life through that last morning with Rey, Lauren transforms her life, her consciousness and her art with Mr. Tuttle at the center of this new reality.
Readers familiar with DeLillo's previous work will find he has again set out to chart the deeper truths of contemporary life. In form, the work remains largely retrospective, in depth slyly suggestive of the monumental landscapes he is capable of constructing.
Ultimately, it is the reader who judges the mark of a true artist, one who not only seeks to challenge himself, but his readers, in the most demanding ways. For most, "The Body Artist" will prove once and for all no one does it better.