“I do not belong to the era of writers who will be able to make any sense of this particularly turbulent chapter of American history; one cannot make a bed while still tangled in its sheets.” - Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
I read Biography of X by Catherine Lacey primarily on a beach this summer between bouts of air quality alerts as well as record-breaking heat. It was a moment of peace between ecological cataclysms, which felt like just the right time to read this much-buzzed-about book.
This book is a tough one to explain though. It’s one of those ones you want to read with as little information ahead of time as possible. But, if you need a description: it is kind of like if The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon was chucked into a blender with Tár and Forrest Gump. Stick with me here.
The widow of a famous, genre-defying artist/writer/musician known only as “X” tries to write a corrected account of her deceased wife’s life after another writer publishes an “untrue” version of events. X was a bombastic and often pretentious shapeshifter whose aloof nature kept her at several arms length from everyone around her. Said widow, who is only referred to as C.M. throughout the text, promised her wife that she wouldn’t look into her past, but as she begins to uncover the truth, she finds herself unable to look away.
Biography of X takes place in an alternate version of American history where the South successfully secedes from the North after World War II. The South becomes an authoritarian theocracy, from which X escapes. The North becomes a liberal haven where gay marriage is legalized, women have equal rights, and everyone gets universal basic income. Regardless, X rubs elbows with (and starts feuds with) names we know and love in pop culture, including David Bowie, Susan Sontag, and even RuPaul.
I personally love an alternative history, especially one that feels true based solely on emotional truth. There’s something so satisfying about imagining the history I learned about so diligently in school being rewritten, particularly when it involves a more liberal and progressive few post-war decades. Some of the satisfaction also lies in imagining: what it would be like to actually think through what would happen if the South seceded from the North? How many of us liberal coastal elites have wondered about that?
But perhaps what rang most true to me was that even in a world where all the political anxiety could be controlled amidst the division of the country, the anxiety doesn’t end. The country is torn apart to such a degree that terrorists wreck havoc across the north AND south. A person like X can start a new life with little to no consequence. C.M. writes the book during the period of national reunification, where both governments scramble to hide errors and atrocities in the name of safety.
In other words: American anxiety morphs, but never truly goes away.
Lacey’s writing is compelling for loads of reasons, but that immersive world-building which rewrites an entirely new America was perhaps the most absorbing part of the story for me. And it makes me wonder: what else can be learned about our anxieties from American alternative historical fiction?
Leave a comment with your favorite alternative American history below!