Image from Amazon.com

We can definitely claim that Biography of X (not, NOT to be confused with The Autobiography of Malcolm X) by Catherine Lacey leaves plenty to be discussed about it. It also does some things that I have never seen before. Did I enjoy the book? To the extent that I was gawping at its literary acrobatics, but not beyond that. I mean, the writing was decent, but presented in a voice that would be appropriate for a biography even though it is a fake biography (aka a novel); it was stripped down too much to really hear much voice or style. It was much too long (and repetitive). It was largely set in the 70s-90s New York art scene, which is not only overdone but boring to me. The characters were miserable. And it did not deliver on many of its promises, including some sort of one-two punch of a twist.

It’s hard to describe Biography of X adequately. Most pitches and synopses do it straight, like this is some sort of normal novel. A super-famous artist dies. Her surviving wife is coming to terms with her and their relationship and decides to—despite X’s wishes—delve into X’s past and write the biography. But X had been secretive, enigmatic, a master of disguise for a reason, and what X uncovers—travelling to Europe, plunging into the cessationist, wall-partitioned South (this is alternative history)—could also undo her.

However, that little plot synopsis doesn’t really tell you anything about what you are about to pick up, if you choose to read this. It is one of those fake nonfiction books, first of all. So there is the first title page, Biography of X by Catherine Lacey, a novel, and then there is the second title page, Biography of X by C.M. Lucca, a biography. Both the novel and the “biography” include footnotes and endnotes. The book is also—I have decided this on my own and I am sticking to it—a collage. I’ve never seen a collage in the form of the long-form written word before, but it’s what we have here. Lacey has a new, strange process which includes taking real-life people, history, and quotes and giving them alternate realities, twists, and attributing them to other people. Lacey snipped up pop, art, and political history since the 1940s and pieced it back together with a weaving of a fictional history of the South (theocratic), North (communist) and West having become different areas? countries?, civil war, and the eventual reunification (in 1996, I think?). It’s hard to know, actually, when what you are reading is real or based on a real person or a real quote (without referencing the endnotes and Googling like mad). I can’t say for sure whether or not the woman could get sued for slander, but it is pretty… weird. And also feels art-elitist.

I read this book for a book club (surprise!). But I hadn’t finished it before the meeting and discussion, and I had an excellent excuse; because the paperback is coming out in February, the publishers were letting the hardcovers sell-out at the stores in January. I could not find a copy, even on Amazon and at the bookstore that was hosting the club. A few days before the club meeting, I wandered into an indie bookstore that happened to have one copy left on the shelves. And I paid full price at $30. Sigh. And this is not a read-in-two-days kind of book. In the end, I think I took five days, which is pretty impressive. Then again, I already knew, from looking at reviews, that there weren’t any of the types of surprises I was hoping for, at the end. So, the discussion was still interesting to listen to, midway through my read.

I will say this: the book—like the physical object—is beautiful. It lacks a dust cover… hallelujah! Instead, the cover has a fabric feel in a matte finish. The paper quality and color inside, the font choices, etc., are all noticeably pleasant. There are also ten pages at the beginning and end of the book that fade from black to white through shades of gray, and then from white to black at the end, to make sure we know, we feel, that we are stepping into this alternate reality, this distinctly fictional place. There are also photos, consistent with the biography idea, but I thought they were kinda sparse and low-quality, like I was reading Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children. And fake documents. Letters. Files.

There wasn’t one person at the group who defended the length of this book. At almost 400 pages, written in the style of a biography and jam-packed with details and allusions, it got bo-ring. Slow. And let’s not forget repetitive. A lot of us felt like there was a strong dropping-off point at about halfway through the book, after which a few things happened: first, we left the civil war and territories dystopia (which was interesting, for sure) and went to that art scene I mentioned. And never really went back; second, interviews with more and more people just get repetitive, not adding to X’s character or C. M.’s growth (unless to show her obsessiveness, but this was too big of an ask for the reader just for that); and third, that’s just plain too many biography pages for someone who’s not a fan. Especially when almost all the characters—especially X—are awful people (and C. M. is almost like a non-entity, which should have been a point, but felt flat to me). Lacey should have severely edited this book. (For example, I wrote “The End” before the last paragraph of my copy, partly out of frustration, by that point. It was like, she had two last paragraphs and refused to choose between them: the story of this novel.)

Or, instead of drastically cutting, in the words of someone at book club, “She’s young enough. She could have just written two books.” Yes! Because Biography of X does feel like two books, one being the biography of a megalomaniac by her mouse of a wife, exploring that ol’ art scene and the nature of love with someone incapable of love. The other book would be the strange, pieced-together, alternative history of a South that split and became totalitarian in the 1940s. This could have featured a girl who didn’t quite fit in and her attempts to survive or escape, ala Fahrenheit 451 or The Giver. Ultimately, it seems, many people don’t feel like these two stories came together. The one story, in fact, seemed to disappear, leaving the reader waiting for it to pop back up and assert its significance again—give us validation for having read all that stuff to begin with.

Which leads me to another point: I didn’t think X was consistent. She seemed, to me, like two different characters in these two different stories. I had a very hard time believing her prodigiousness or her anger or her sociopathy or her sheer talent, especially given her character as a child and a teenager and a young woman. I mean, I think we were supposed to assume that some of it was probably luck, as it always is, and also that no one quite had the whole story with her, but Lacey certainly could have dropped clues from her past that would translate to the kind of total-asshole and multi-area-genius that X is. Not to mention that she gets famous in various fields from scratch, with a new identity, multiple times. Don’t make me gag. I believe that is what many reviewers mean when they say X is “unbelievable.” It’s just not a realistic, or even possible, situation.

Let’s talk about the ending, without any actual spoilers. Um… there was an opportunity here for the artist-and-wife story to have a real, classic, mind-blowing twist at the end, you know, like Gone Girl. I was expecting it, actually, even though a part of me warned me that this is not what Lacey, with this work, is up to. But she gave us so many clues and such a set-up. I mean, there is a twist at the end, but it’s delivered is such a way that both C. M. and the reader receive it flatly. Which may be a problem with the biography medium. Or not. Still, I thought the clues (so many deaths and disappearances!, the South and its secret agents!) pointed toward even more of a twist, even more revelation about X in the eleventh hour. Nope-ity nope.

In the end, the book was about a toxic (or maybe abusive) relationship. Why, then, all the acrobatics? There was just way too much going on in this book. There are lots of interesting things going on among it all, but taken as a whole, it’s a cacophony, leading to confusion laced with exhaustion. And readers relegating it to a doorstop.

Here’s an interesting point made by someone at my book club meeting: though Lacey is pretty meticulous about her creation of an alternative American history, the North doesn’t change enough. Her very amazing example is the music. What would the music of the 50s through the 90s be without the South’s cultural influence? Certainly not what it is in Biography of X. Which could all just be interesting things to talk about, if everything else worked. But Lacey does do something obnoxious that I see many new books and movies doing, and that is painting the “other side” as all demon. Honestly, she does try to throw in a few lines later in the book, real off-handed, that are like “Oh, yeah, I can see things from their point of view too, and I’m not all perfect,” but it’s too little, too late. The South (even though Lacey is from Mississippi), Christians, religion even, are just monstrous. There is no nuance to it. Anarchy is cool. You follow Jesus, you’re gonna end up in a long, floral dress and bare feet, forced into marriage and child-bearing, illiterate and violent. Yeah, not a fan of painting people groups with such broad strokes (especially since I belong to both of these groups).

If you decide to read it, here is a list of things you might want to look up beforehand, at least to have a bit of knowledge:

Susan SontagRenata AdlerDavid BowieTom WaitsConnie ConverseSophie CalleClaire FontaineKathy AckerEmily DickinsonEmma GoldmanWim WendersDenis JohnsonPatti SmithBernie SandersKath BoudinFrank O’HaraJackson Pollock, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Calder, Marcel DuchampCindy ShermanAndrea FraseranarchycommunismFDRand I’m sure I’m missing many, many more

The lesson here, with this list, is not to assume that any character is made up, and therefore that Lacey is referencing and saying something about them/it. On the other hand, I don’t think I would want to spend that much mind-space and research time on this book. I would have appreciated knowing a little more before book club, though, like who Connie Converse and Sophie Calle are.

Biography of X really is a work of collage, from misquoted quotes to famous characters rewritten to pop culture and news events from the time of writing (like Anna Delvey, NXIVM, and Theranos—which are not referenced, but used as plotlines). I just wish Lacey had made her collage about something more interesting, as the New York art scene is both overdone and boring to most people. Also, most of the allusions felt elitist, like only the cool kids would get it. I agree with lots of people that it had potential, but the characters were insufferable and unbelievable, the story of alternative America gets lost and feels pointless, and it’s just far too long, especially since it is written utterly and completely like a biography, so there is no “novel” about it, no drama. It reads like nonfiction because that’s how it’s supposed to read, but very little happens and it devolves into repetition. Then does it ever deliver on a real twist? No? X is just sadistic? It could have had a much more exciting ending, with the characters along the way involved in it. It was set up like they were still withholding from C. M., so what she could have discovered in the end could have really walloped us. As it stands, even the big ending was delivered quick and dispassionately, which was a let-down for me.

It is not surprising that Catherine Lacey’s website is a little out there. It’s kinda fun to look at, though it might give you a similar feeling of not having all the pertinent cultural information to appreciate it, if that’s how you felt about Biography of X. She has won all sorts of awards and has been published in all the big-name magazines, as a short story author and a critic. Before Biography of X, she published the novels Pew, Nobody is Ever Missing, and The Answers, and the short story collection, Certain American States. She is working on her first nonfiction book (or so her website says; there is another title available online, which is The Art of the Affair), The Mobius Book, which isn’t surprising after this one. She’s also putting together another book of short stories, My Stalkers. Some people at book club like some of her other work better than Biography of X, but she definitely appears to have an oeuvre.

“…I am currently unable to explain how unable I am to undertake such a task” (p8).

“…I was, of course, that most mundane fool who feels that though everyone on earth, without exception, will die, the woman she loves simply cannot, well never” (p12).

“She seemed to me to have the face of someone who had been given up by her mother and had spent the rest of her life refusing that initial refusal, as if her own mother should have been able to recognize the enormous capacities that burned inside that soft infant, and not the whole world would be punished for it” (p18).

“But there’s no point in trying to write an autopsy of a marriage, as either side would be insulted with falsehood” (p27).

“But he didn’t know me anymore, as the trouble with knowing people is how the target keeps moving” (p36).

“Now it is so clear to me that love is the opposite of deification, that it erodes persona down to its moral root” (p38).

“It’s not in a person’s nature to just be one thing, you know. No one ever faulted you for being more than a father, did they?” (p76).

“I/m not one of those women who thinks her children are always her children, forever. At some point they become other people…” (p76-77).

“I’m still angry, but you can’t really be angry with a place unless you love it. You have to love it to wish it could be better, to wish it could be different” (p82).

“…it’s often difficult to change the most mundane details of our lives” (p83).

“Just as the policies of the South were believed divine, but instead were cruel, those of the North were often fair in theory but chaotic in practice. Political power still seemed to be a necessarily corrupting force” (p87).

“New lovers are always digging their graves and lying down, smiling, scooping the dirt in with their clean hands” (p105).

“It was not equality that bred women’s contentment, but limits” (p106).

“No one wants to believe that they are, at heart, more interested in comfort than in truth” (p107).

“’Paul says we have to choose our battles, by which he means to choose no battles …. [women] are asked to be alone, to go faithfully into solitude, to ease into misunderstanding, to inhabit it, to make it warm and beautiful’” (p130).

“There are some times in grief when being witnessed is the only thing you need, and there are others, months and years in my case, when nothing suits but invisibility” (p166).

“The sight of this pair gave me a feeling I often had when traveling abroad—a feeling that our country had gotten so much wrong, almost everything, all of it, wrong, and perhaps I had, too, that I was entrenched in my wrongness, that I had somehow committed myself to it and no longer knew the way out” (p198).

“In real life, dying isn’t the time for confession. Dying is a full-time thing” (p203).

“We wanted to free women from dominance, but we couldn’t dominate them out of being dominated… The agenda eats its own tail” (p208).

“You could argue, of course, that physical beauty indicates nothing of any depth about a person, yet few can avoid falling under its spell” (p279).

“’I believe it is all logical, only there is not enough time in one life to locate every explanation, do you understand?’ he asked. ‘We must live with the explanations we have, and respect the absences of those who are absent’” (p296).

“’Democracy is only as good as the people can make it, and we’re a country of idiots, don’t you think so?’ / ‘I don’t think so,’ Lehrer said. / ‘That’s because you’re an idiot, too’” (p309).

“’At some point offendability moved its offices to the hip side of town,’ she wrote in her diaries” (p309).

“…there it was again, that useless, human blame two people will toss between each other when they become too tired or weak to carry the weight of love” (p345).

A movie or series of Biography of X would definitely lose some of its tactile and biography-book appeal (with all the notes and quotes and letters and things), but it could definitely be done as a mockumentary. Not that I see any evidence that it is being done. I don’t. In my head, I eventually had to give faces to the characters, and without much description, Sigourney Weaver became my X, and Rosie Perez with frizzy hair and nervous tics (and without the accent) my C. M.