Catherine Lacey

A Novel

Biography of X

Silva

Some days it seems she is only away in the next room, and when go to that room, she has fled to another room, and when I reach that one she is in yet another. So often l am sure I hear her voice on the other side of wall or door, but she never stops moving lecturing, arguing, laughing, making and remaking her case, always insistent, scouring, spiraling, clear. Even now, with all these years gone and all these stories stacked up irrevocably against her, I keep hearing her footsteps come steadily down the stairs, and I swear some afternoons I can hear her taking off her boots at the back door and padding up the hallway after an afternoon hike. In anger, in longing, in both, despite myself, I strain to hear those steps.

Now it is so clear to me that love is the opposite of deification, that it erodes persona down to its mortal root. She was always human, difficult as it was for me to admit that; I made so much trouble for myself by refusing to see it.

Clara Gauthier

I desired her beyond reason, beyond self-protection, beyond common sense, and it is just as difficult to call that love from afar as it is not to call it love when within it. 

New lovers are always digging their graves and lying down, smiling, scooping the dirt in with their clean hands. 

Like many other women at that age and time, I harbored a swelling anger that I did not know how to express, as if a new organ had grown inside me but had not yet begun to function. 

I fear I am the sort of person who needs to feel some measure of fear in order to love someone. My first love had been—privately, embarrassingly—God itself, something that made me, something that could destroy me, every mortal relation that came after, until her, had always fallen short of the total metaphysical satisfaction I’d felt in prayer. 

B.A. Bacigal

No one will ever love you passionately for being nice.

description of looking at an image of her wife and her wife's ex, seemingly elated, knowing their relationship fell apart yet still being jealous of the (even falsely) percieved happiness

the image was a powerful fiction, made only more powerful by how little reality it contained.

The price of having an identity is the inability to transform it.

No one wants to admit that they, too, might live quite happily in a simulation, in a simulacrum of life. No one wants to believe that they are, at heart, more interested in comfort than in truth.

i love catherine lacey so damn much - this novel is such an undertaking, both by the reader and the author,  it is a love story to the cultural figures and artists of the 60s, 70s and beyond, and simultaneously a viciously academic and personal exploration of an alternate history of the united states that explores the impact of a religious right wing political culture. 

it’s also about toxic ass lesbians. what else could you ask for?

i love catherine lacey so damn much - this novel is such an undertaking, both by the reader and the author,  it is a love story to the cultural figures and artists of the 60s, 70s and beyond, and simultaneously a viciously academic and personal exploration of an alternate history of the united states that explores the impact of a religious right wing political culture. 

it’s also about toxic ass lesbians. what else could you ask for?

remarkable execution & ideas, but drags on towards the end. very very interesting world building with the northern and southern territories, yet i didn't feel fully satisfied by the end of the novel. 

this is a violently inventive book ; it is a book for book people and a book for art people and holds a mirror up to our faces and makes us look at ourselves. i have not read anything like it before

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. I enjoyed how the book went on mission to discover who X is and in part ended up presenting readers with a chance to learn more about C (the narrator). I loved how that even as a piece of fiction it used iconic New York landmarks and neighborhoods. I also love how it included a fictional history lesson. I would say the first 2/3 of the book was really enjoyable but for some reason the last third was really difficult for me to push through. I felt like the last few chapters before the last chapter were unnecessary or at least I couldn't see how they really tied in or added to the story.

Calissa McNeely

almost finished will return one day if i need some light creative reading

Marion

The sheer scope of this book is phenomenal. Truly in awe. I am endlessly fascinated by all that can be done with the novel and I fear there’s so much left to be done, we’ve only scratched the surface 

Allegra Solomon

Lindy

In 1973, Roberta Breitmore, taking her first steps, arrived in San Francisco. A work of performance art by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Breitmore represents the making of an archetypical American woman. Hershman Leeson developed a personal history, physical appearance, and set of mannerisms unique to the persona, then spent four years inhabiting her, building a documented presence, and thus becoming "real" both socially and institutionally. Included among Roberta's activities were opening a bank account, going on dates, attending Weight Watchers meetings, and visiting a psychologist and dentist. In 1977, Hershman Leeson enlisted three additional women to inhabit the persona, expanding Roberta's experiences. In 1978, Hershman Leeson concluded the performance with an exorcism.

--

Catherine Lacey's Biography of X is a fictional biography of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, known only as X, as written by said artist's widow. The book I've read most similar to Biography of X is Sara Stridsberg's Valerie; or, The Faculty of Dreams. If you haven't read that, you could also take the movie Forrest Gump and imagine if it were directed by Todd Haynes. So what we're looking at includes a setting that is just a slight tilt sideways of our own reality, themes of identity formation, themes of identity as it relates to celebrity, and people doing interviews. It's not going to appeal to everybody. 

I liked the prose style a lot. I found the alternative timeline intriguing, although the world presented was not internally consistent whatsoever. I liked the undercurrent theme of utopia/dystopia and need to tease this aspect out more in my head. I liked the inclusion of photographs. 

As an Important Artist, X does everything and knows everyone and is also regarded as prodigy level talent at everything from piano to bartending to writing novels(view spoiler)[ which is all the more impressive/implausible coming from someone who is also a defector from a culturally isolated theocratic dictatorship (hide spoiler)]. She corresponds with Susan Sontag, records with David Bowie, and crashes parties at Warhol's Factory. The author is so committed to this bit that it detracts and distracts from the main text. Like, in a world where same-sex marriages were legalized in the first half of the 20th century and men are fed up with being labelled "male artists" as opposed to "artists," I don't think RuPaul and drag queens as a concept would have the same cultural pull. We've got decades of UBI and everything else socialists could ask for but also a whole class of multimillionaire full time socialites? Well, it was probably fun to write. 

The book could have easily been a hundred pages shorter and not lost anything. And yes, I know the book is going to trend more style over substance seeing that the point is that (view spoiler)[ there's no there there  (hide spoiler)] with regards to both X and the narrator. Which is a cliched direction to take this type of narrative; it went exactly where I expected it to go, and was summarily disappointing. 

--
(view spoiler)[
   [Roberta Breitmore] is a character who is only really fulfilled when she chased other people [....] Roberta's all of us, really; they may look different, but that's just Roberta in disguise. 
 (hide spoiler)]
-- Lynn Hershman Leeson on the subject of Roberta Breitmore, 2020

Maria

“Does time clarify or distort these memories? So many claim that distance from an event or a year or a person helps us see meanings and truths more precisely, without the muddle or myopia of the immediate moment—but is that so?” 

incredibly done, especially in the level of detail used to create the alternate universe this is set in - where the US split in two following the end of WW2 - and the way it’s weaved through with events and figures from our own real world. i loved the way that this setting, although so vast, obviously sets and influences the story, the lives of its characters, and mostly of X, but it’s not necessarily center stage. i also loved that despite it being a biography of the mysterious artist X, it is actually a story of her widow, and her desperate need to not only understand X, but herself. you do have to suspend your disbelief in some parts of this, especially when it comes to X’s reach and artistic influence i think, but it’s still very engaging, and feels so real, despite being fully aware that it is not. it does, however, lag a bit around the middle part, especially the europe and the publishing house sections, when it felt like just a bit too much, a bit overdone, which are the only reason why i can’t fully give it a five stars. that being said, still so so good.

Biographies of fictional toxic lesbians win yet again, I have to say.

Lacey chooses to tackle quite a few topics through this - from identity to art to US politics - which is challenging to pull off, no matter the literary talent. But she has enough focus and cleverness to construct this around the polarising but influencial figure of X. It is an interesting concept and Lacey has the conviction to execute it very well to the point where she had me on the edge of my seat to see what C.M. discovers next.

Biographies of fictional toxic lesbians win yet again, I have to say.

Lacey chooses to tackle quite a few topics through this - from identity to art to US politics - which is challenging to pull off, no matter the literary talent. But she has enough focus and cleverness to construct this around the polarising but influencial figure of X. It is an interesting concept and Lacey has the conviction to execute it very well to the point where she had me on the edge of my seat to see what C.M. discovers next.

What I loved most about this work was the obsession Lacey imbued into her narrator. How she could explain something terrible X has done as if it was nothing, and how anything ever said that she doesn’t approve of she dumps on until it’s dead. Unreliable narrator to a tee, but I guess that’s understood and stated at the beginning. I think the inclusion of pictures led it all to seem a little juvenile, like a PowerPoint presentation. I understand it was to give more semblance to ‘biography’ but we all know it was fiction going in so really not needed. Overall it dragged after the ST visit, and I appreciate that happening early but it certainly affected how I enjoyed everything that followed it. Really cool story, something I’ll look back on forever probably.

Biography of X A Novel

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