Routines and the Performance Piece in Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist

By anatomising Laruen's performance piece — Body Time in DeLillo's The Body Artist, this essay rereads her piece not merely as a response to personal loss, but rather, evolving contemplation on an uncertain existence of which death is only an episode. Staging three socially invisible bodies and their respective daily routines, Lauren goes beyond the private realm of personal loss to address in a broader context the lure of mechanical repetition bred by a routine-dictated life and to spotlight the universality of irregularities. As manifested by its excruciating monthslong gestation period, the three bodies featured in the piece are inextricably interweaved to unveil different ways to approach routines and irregularities. Body Time thus foregrounds a grieving artist's trial and error process with routines and her ambitious artistic venture to approach an uncertain existence contingent on irregularities.