Spiritually lost as most are after a loved one dies, Lauren continues to stay in the large, lonely house she’s renting, merely going through the motions of living. She concentrates on maintaining her body like a mechanic maintains a classic car, absorbing herself in herself, perhaps like she always has. She spends hours mesmerized by a live-stream video feed showing a two-lane road in Kotka, Finland. The cars that enter and leave are comparable to the people in Lauren’s life: omnipresent yet elusive, necessary for survival, Lauren is always waiting for the moment when they will leave. This is the way Lauren likes her life – other people at a safe distance, there to observe when it suits her needs, until she feels she needs to return to the safety of her isolated self.
         One day she discovers that a mentally disturbed young man has been living in the house with her, a man who can communicate only by repeating lines of dialogue he’s heard. Strangely, she feels unthreatened, and she dubs him “Mr. Tuttle”. She finds herself drawn closer to him daily, hoping, prodding, sometimes even begging him to repeat snatches of conversation that Rey uttered before his suicide. She becomes obsessed with hearing the irrelevant bits and pieces that composed what little communication they had. Now, after his death, Lauren finds meaning not in what Rey once said but the simple fact that those words came from his mouth. It is not the mimicking of her late husband that she longs for so much as being near someone who is keenly attuned to her deepest emotional desires, someone who connects with her on a level that she’s not even aware of.
         What is significant about The Body Artist is the manner in which the writing style itself is assimilated into the message of the story. The scattered, fragmented narration mirrors Lauren’s own thought processes. The text has a fluid, undefined, almost organic feel to it; the writing itself seems to pulse and breathe. There’s a strange unity created between Lauren and the reader, and the fact that the novel is written in the third person actually seems to enhance this feeling. Perhaps it’s because the limited omniscient viewpoint is more honest than a first-person narration of Lauren (or anyone, for that matter) could ever be.
         The meaning of the story, however, is perhaps somehow tied together with Lauren’s occupation. I’ve heard the term “performance artist” before, and all that came to mind were freaks of humanity. Even a close friend of Lauren’s, Mariella, sounds just as confused in her review of one of Lauren’s performances. When describing a history of performance art, she cites “the woman who makes paintings with her vagina,” “the lavishly tattooed man who has himself fitted with a crown of thorns,” “the man who drives nails into his penis.” For most, these shameless acts are seen as little more than an attempt to get attention, to shock, to do something that simply just hasn’t been done, even if it means resorting to the absurd. However, Lauren’s performance is more than that. She treats her body like a canvas and uses it to tell a story.Like all truly great artists, she continues to search for answers for her own well-being. She communicates to herself, and as a result, she communicates to the audience.
         Most people take the simple act of conversation for granted, living in the fragmented style of Lauren, perhaps waiting for the event that will trigger them into consciousness. Reading The Body Artist isn’t meant to be a wake-up call to anything, so much as a simple observation as to how one woman reacted to her own life-changing event. It’s not necessary to dig deep to enjoy The Body Artist ; it’s simply a fascinating read, strangely touching and deeply entrancing. Then again, that’s what I expected. For me, there are few pleasures in life, and reading Don DeLillo will always be one of them.

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