Book Review
Biography of X (2023)
by Catherine Lacey
Every week I skim the New York Times Sunday Book Review section for new books to read. They do a terrific job keeping up to date with everything going on in the first and second divisions of publishing, especially as it relates to keeping up on fiction. The idea of an overwhelming multiplicity of options simply isn't true if you restrict the category to "Literary fiction that gets a contemporary review in the New York Times Book Review". If that is the specific category you are talking somewhere between 0-10 books a week, with many weeks with zero prospects. I mention that now because Biography of X 100% came to my attention via the the review written by Dwight Garner. I'm not ashamed to admit it- nor am I ashamed that I had never heard of author Catherine Lacey, despite the fact that she's written three prior books that all garnered significant praise, if not qualifying as the kind of "hit" that would have brought her to my doorstep.
The Biography of X is many things: A rich counter-factual history that takes it place alongside The Plot Against America in the annals of succesful alternate history/literary fiction cross-overs. It is a rich inquiry into what it means to be a capital A artist in the 20th century. It is a sometimes tedious take or parody of the genre of "oral history" popularized by magazines like Spin , Rolling Stone and Esquire, with an additional overlap between the self-seeking inward looking feature journalism synonymous with the New Yorker under Tina Brown. It is a "secret history" of the downtown art world of New York from the 60's through the 90's. In the end, all of these threads combine for a 1 +1 = 3 type of impact that left me reeling and has me searching for an opportunity to buy a first hardback edition at an independent bookstore so I can go back and see in print what I may have missed on the Audiobook (which is fabulous, this audiobook).
If you are looking for specific details, I would refer you to the New York Times book review I linked above- personally, even though it was necessary to get me interested in the first place, I found that the NYT review did indeed spoil some of the choicest counter-factual historical moments. It doesn't spoil the pay off of the plot- which is substantial. You make your way through the sometimes awkward "oral history" format- with lots of "quoted from the interview with the authors" and footnotes to imaginary publications and there are times where a reader or listener might question whether it is worth it. But it is- the ending is indeed worth the awkward superstructure. I have no doubt that Biography of X has all the makings of a cult classic, if not a straight-up classic.
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