‘Artist’ paints the ordinary

In Don DeLillos new novel, “The Body Artist,” the author does what he refused to do in his 1985 National Book Award-winning “White Noise:” he kills. Both works meditate on death from beginning to end, in remarkable but highly divergent ways (Make no mistake, despite the many strengths of “The Body Artist,” “White Noise” is far superior). While the Gladney family is practically frozen in fear in “White Noise,” DeLillo never lets his characters or readers actually deal with the occurrence of death.

In contrast, within “The Body Artist,” readers are introduced to Rey Robles and his third wife Lauren Hartke (the body artist herself) in an overly-extended description of their breakfast. Every action is detailed and catalogued by DeLillo to an obsessive degree. He writes, “She poured milk into the bowl. He sat down and got up. He went to the fridge and got the orange juice and stood in the middle of the room shaking the carton to float the pulp and make the juice thicker.” These descriptions are witty at times and mundane at others. Clearly, DeLillo’s purpose is to bring us closer to his characters by portraying their ordinary life. The book continually suggests that life is represented by ordinary moments, such as the breakfast in the first chapter.

Immediately following the breakfast is Robles obituary, as the novel completely changes shape. From this point, “The Body Artist” focuses on how Hartke copes with her husband’s suicide. She refuses to learn more about her late husband’s work as a film director, and instead allows what seems to be a figment of her imagination to inhabit her house. Hartke finds this inhabitant (an extremely short man wearing white boxers and an undershirt) in one of the rooms of the house. Rather than ordering him out or calling the police, she nurtures him with attempts to teach him to speak and proceeds to bathe and dress him.

This random visitor, whom Hartke names Mr. Tuttle after an old science teacher, is dealt with in a completely realistic manner – as if he is not just a figment of her imagination. However, it is difficult to deny that this is not what DeLillo wants the reader to take from the experience. The inhabitant is able to speak in both Hartke and Robles voice — Hartke eventually begs him to talk like Robles. At one point Hartke asks herself how much of his impersonation is actually taking place and how much is part of her own fabrication.

Like Wilder, the youngest Gladney child in “White Noise,” Mr. Tuttle, is a metaphorical pet. Hartke is careful not to speak of the metaphor as it seems too obvious and cruel. In “White Noise,” the metaphor, is never spelled out. Yet when the reader is first introduced to Wilder, it is unclear whether they are reading about a pet dog or a baby.

The only description of Hartke, the body artist, is provided in Robles’ obituary. It isn’t until the end of the novel that DeLillo explains exactly what a body artist does and how her abilities may have created or affected Mr. Tuttle.

Tuttle’s departure may be because he was always a part of Hartke and she has finally become able to grieve without delirium. This, of course, is speculation. Trying to define a precise concept in “The Body Artist” is like trying to assemble David Lynch’s film “Lost Highway” into a narrative structure, or perhaps trying to create a literal meaning in the magical realism of Latin American authors like Cortazar and Marquez.

Understanding “The Body Artist” literally is as difficult for the reader as it is for Hartke to try and make sense of Mr. Tuttle’s appearance. This is not simply just a convenient coincidence. DeLillo enables the reader to understand Hartke by creating these parallels. She watches a live-streaming video of a two-lane road in Finland, waiting for something to happen in the same way that the reader is taken through 20-some pages of an ordinary breakfast. All of a sudden, every tiny, insignificant detail becomes important for both Hartke, as well as the reader. Hartke understands this by the end of “The Body Artist,” just as the Gladneys came to a superior understanding in “White Noise” 15 years ago. Life is in the small things.