The setting – and the upending – of narrative expectations begins early in American writer Catherine Lacey’s fourth novel. An author’s note informs the reader the book contains attributions “not mentioned in the text”,recalling Derrida’s deathless line about there being nothing outside it. But where does the text end,exactly? Even as a material object,this can prove a tricky question.
Biography of X contains sparring title pages (Lacey’s,followed by Lucca’s,each published by Granta,with Lucca’s copyright belonging to the year 2005),twin author biographies and a sheaf of photocopied preliminary pages,reminiscent of how the American poet Susan Howe makes visible,in her work,the formal and physical materiality of the text.
Lacey’s novel incorporates quotes and material from writers,artists and intellectuals:Susans (not only Howe but Sontag);Lacey’s familial ancestors (plus her debut novel and “favorite negative reader review” of it – “More depressing thanThe Bell Jar”);New York’s cultural milieu (Dorothy Parker,Elizabeth Hardwick,Kathy Acker,Cindy Sherman,Jenny Holzer,Richard Hell,Renata Adler,Vivian Gornick);a Kerry O’Brien interview with David Bowie;and anAge article concerning David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.
In addition to this,Biography of X includes illustrations and images:found,commissioned,created by the author,donated and received and licensed under creative commons. Indeed,the whole book,in its explicitly collaborative and bowerbird nature,constitutes a kind of creative commons.
Yet paradoxically,Biography of X is a novel that feels more fictive than one with more conventionally fictitious trappings might. Its world-building and non-fiction constructs – footnotes,photos,facsimiles of letters and other material – tend mostly to highlight the novel’s scaffolding. Which is part of the point:artifice increasing the sense of artificiality,reminding us that all art is premised on this logic.