Current:Home > reviewsEverything she knew about her wife was false — a faux biography finds the 'truth'-DB Wealth Institute B2 Reviews & Ratings
Everything she knew about her wife was false — a faux biography finds the 'truth'
lotradecoin beginner trading guide View Date:2024-12-25 16:44:44
To those readers who prize "relatability," Catherine Lacey's latest novel may as well come wrapped in a barbed wire book jacket. There is almost nothing about Biography of X, as this novel is called, that welcomes a reader in — least of all, its enigmatic central character, a fierce female artist who died in 1996 and who called herself "X," as well as a slew of other names. Think Cate Blanchett as Tár, except more narcicisstic and less chummy.
When the novel opens, X's biography is in the early stages of being researched by her grieving widow, a woman called CM, who comes to realize that pretty much everything she thought she knew about her late wife was false. The fragmented biography of X that CM slowly assembles is shored up by footnotes and photographs, included here.
Real-life figures also trespass onto the pages of this biography to interact with X — who, I must remind you, is a made-up character. Among X's friends are Patti Smith, the former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin, and the beloved New York School poet, Frank O'Hara.
As if this narrative weren't splintered enough, Lacey's novel is also a work of alternate history, in which we learn that post-World War II America divided into three sections: The liberal Northern Territory where Emma Goldman served as FDR's chief of staff (don't let the dates trip you up); the Southern Territory, labeled a "tyrannical theocracy," and the off-the-grid "Western Territory." A violent "Reunification" of the Northern and Southern Territories has taken place, but relations remain hostile.
Feeling put off by all this experimental genre-bending? Don't be. For as much as Lacey has written a postmodern miasma of a novel about deception and the relationship of the artist to their work, she's also structured that novel in an old-fashioned way: via a Scheherazade-like sequence of stories. Most of these stories are about the charismatic X's life and fabrications; all of them are arresting in their originality; and, the final story that CM is led to, housed in a storage facility, is devastating in its calculated brutality.
But let's return to the beginning. In what CM calls the "boneless days" in the aftermath of of X's death, she tells us that:
"It wasn't a will to live that kept me alive then, but rather a curiosity about who else might come forward with a story about my wife. ... And might I — despite how much I had deified and worshipped X and believed her to be pure genius — might I now accept the truth of her terrible, raw anger and boundless cruelty? It was the ongoing death of a story, dozens of second deaths, the death of all those delicate stories I lived in with her."
I hesitate to mention any of revelations CM stumbles upon in the course of her research into X — a person CM says, "lived in a play without intermission in which she cast herself in every role." Watching those bizarre costume changes take place on these pages is part of the pleasure of reading this novel. It's not giving much away, though, to say that one of the earliest shockers here is that X, who arrived in New York in the 1970s ready to create experimental music with David Bowie and pricey conceptual art out of boulders, actually was born Carrie Lu Walker into the repressive Handmaid's Tale world of the Southern Territory.
Hiding her own identity as X's widow, CM travels to the Southern Territory to interview X's parents — a risky move in a land where women who deviate from the repressive norm are still stoned to death. During this research trip and the many that follow, CM also investigates the mystery of her own metamorphosis: namely, how did she — a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist — allow herself to be drawn into what Emily Dickinson called the "soft Eclipse" of being a wife, the very same kind of wife the folks in the Southern Territory would approve of? X may not be relatable, but, as we come to know her, the duped CM certainly is.
"The trouble with knowing people," CM says at one point, "is how the target keeps moving." The same could be said of Lacey's brilliant, destabilizing novel. Just when you think you have a handle on Biography of X, it escapes the stack of assumptions where you thought you'd put it, like a profile or an obituary you'd started reading in yesterday's tossed-out paper.
veryGood! (42573)
Related
- 'Love Island UK' stars Molly-Mae Hague, Tommy Fury announce split after 5 years
- Shohei Ohtani won’t pitch this season after major elbow surgery, but he can still hit. Here’s why
- $1B donation makes New York medical school tuition free and transforms students’ lives
- The Supreme Court is weighing a Trump-era ban on bump stocks for guns. Here's what to know.
- 2025 COLA estimate dips with inflation, but high daily expenses still burn seniors
- Beyoncé's country music is causing a surge in cowboy fashion, according to global searches
- Donna Summer estate sues Ye and Ty Dolla $ign, saying they illegally used ‘I Feel Love’
- ESPN apologizes for Formula 1 advertisement that drew ire of Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- Meta kills off misinformation tracking tool CrowdTangle despite pleas from researchers, journalists
- 'The Voice': Watch the clash of country coaches Reba and Dan + Shay emerge as they bust out blocks
Ranking
- Get 10 free boneless wings with your order at Buffalo Wild Wings: How to get the deal
- Prince William pulls out of scheduled appearance at memorial for his godfather amid family health concerns
- TikTokers are using blue light to cure acne. Dermatologists say it's actually a good idea.
- 2024 third base rankings: Jose Ramirez, Austin Riley first off the board
- Gena Rowlands, acting powerhouse and star of movies by her director-husband, John Cassavetes, dies
- A National Tour Calling for a Reborn and Ramped Up Green New Deal Lands in Pittsburgh
- Rep. Lauren Boebert's son Tyler arrested on 22 criminal charges, Colorado police say
- Laurene Powell Jobs’ philanthropy seeks to strengthen communities with grants for local leaders
Recommendation
-
Rob Schneider Responds to Daughter Elle King Calling Out His Parenting
-
Pink's 12-year-old daughter Willow debuts shaved head
-
Prince Harry Loses Legal Challenge Over U.K. Security Protection
-
Taylor Swift Sends Love to Australia Despite Dad's Alleged Assault Incident
-
'Truffles is just like me:' How a Pennsylvania cat makes kids feel proud to wear glasses
-
Alabama man arrested decades after reporting wife missing
-
2024 NFL draft: Ohio State's Marvin Harrison Jr. leads top 5 wide receiver prospect list
-
Funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be held on Friday, his spokesperson says