The Small Noise Upstairs 
Frank Kermode
- The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
The publishers describe this book as ‘lean’, which may be taken to refer to its style, though it also serves as a euphemism for ‘very short, especially considering the price’. Its immediate predecessor was Underworld, about seven times as long (or as fat). That book, as nearly everybody must know, begins with a chapter about a famous baseball game and a boy who retrieves the ball with which the decisive home run was scored. The Body Artist is about as long as the Underworld ball-game.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Frank Kermode’s most recent book is The Age of Shakespeare. He lives in Cambridge.
Other articles by this contributor:
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
The Savage Life · The Adventures of William Empson
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Nutmegged · The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 by Martin Amis.
At Tate Britain · William Blake
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
print layout
tell a friend