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Rating: This American novel, originally titled "The Body Artist" seems quite sparse in content as it is in pages, in the pocket edition by Einaudi it consists of only 102 pages, yes it would seem so looking at the plot, a newlywed couple, he, Rey, an elderly film director, she, Lauren, a dancer and choreographer, rent an old house in Maine not far from the sea, for a few months to relax; initially, the few moments they experience upon waking up while having breakfast are narrated with an abundance of thoughts and details. Then there is an abrupt break where it is learned that he returned to New York to the apartment of his ex-wife and commits suicide by shooting himself in the head, no reason is known nor are any goodbye notes found.
The story proceeds very slowly in the house in Maine where she prefers to continue living until the end of the contract. DeLillo makes us immerse ourselves in a vortex of thoughts through her mind, which sinks into a landscape almost inhabited by ghosts, one of which, Mr. Tuttle, appears as real, and by memories that follow each other, causing us to tumble into absences and presences in daily reality.
In the meantime, she manages through small events happening in the seaside town to build a choreography that she will perform in the theater with doubtful public success but it broadly describes her last lived experiences, including ghosts.
It is not an easy-to-read book as it forces us to reflect almost on every paragraph about what happens and what doesn’t (almost soporifically or dreamily), becoming an inner journey.
There are some phrases or parts of them that I have highlighted on my Kindle and a term that I didn’t know before, which I immediately copy here:
Here is the term (new to me) that I learned is "cessa" and it is not the verb cessare (to cease) nor the toilet's wife but as stated in Lo Zingarelli Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana: feminine noun - A strip of terrain, devoid of vegetation, left in the forest to prevent fires.
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(from "Chapter one") She ran her tongue over her teeth
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then she ran her tongue over her teeth again, with emphasis
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(from the chapter "Rey Robles, 64 years old, director and poet of lonely hearts.") the most convincing and objective reports lead to the conclusion that he was 64 years old at the time of his death.
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(from "Chapter two") There is nothing like furious diarrhea, she thought, to make body and mind one.
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(from "Chapter four") She began to understand that their conversations had no sense of time and that all references to the unspoken, the things a person speaking Dutch might share with someone speaking Chinese – all this was missing from their conversation.
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(from "Chapter five") The word for moonlight is moonlight. This made her happy. It was a phrase with a complex, moving, beautiful, and true logic – or perhaps not so circular but linear, as much as possible.
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(from "Chapter six") Maybe he was just crazy, with a madness out of the ordinary. Not that there is a normality in madness. A lunatic trying to live through the voices of other people.
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She was sure he hadn’t realized the situation or had considered it as an integral part of his existential condition, to the point that being aware of it was just another way of not being aware of it.
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(from the chapter "IN EXTREMIS") There is the woman who paints with her vagina. This is art.
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(from "Chapter seven") Why shouldn't the death of a loved one lead you to obscene ruin? You don’t know how to love the people you love until they disappear suddenly.
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Then she understood. She wanted to feel the strong smell of salt on her face and the passage of time inside her body, she wanted them to tell her who she was.
With that last sentence, this short novel also ends, leaving me with a sense of emptiness, ahem, quite full and nothing.
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