Abstract
This chapter presents a reading of Don DeLillo’s short novel The Body Artist that is informed by the work of Jacques Derrida and particularly by his discussion of mimes and phantoms in “The Double Session” from Dissemination. Starting from DeLillo’s line “I want to say something but what,” the chapter argues that the novel is about a way of being, a hauntology, or about how we inhabit and haunt ourselves and others. In his account of the relation between two people following the death of one, DeLillo details the structures of ghostly imitation, repetition, and allusion that enable us to love, to mourn, and in the end, to live on.
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Coughlan, D. (2016). 2. Mimes and Phantoms: Don DeLillo. In: Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41024-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41024-5_3
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-41023-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-41024-5
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