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.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Flinch Wince Jerk Shirk · Christine Brooke-Rose
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
‘Disgusting’ · Frank Kermode remembers William Empson
Writing about Shakespeare · Frank Kermode has his say
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
‘It’s the way people like us don’t talk’ · Andrew Motion’s Boyhood
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
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