She is not even 40 years old (she was born in Tupelo in 1985) and she is already one of the most important writers of our time. Indeed, Catherine Lacey stood out with his debut No one is ever missingbut the reach he has achieved with his latest novel, X’s Biography (Alfaguara) goes beyond what you can imagine.
It is difficult to speak in the present tense about what may be a masterpiece of our time, but if there is an essential novelcaptivating, unexpected, totemic this year, that is X’s Biography. And little more needs to be added.
How to define it? It’s hard. Let’s imagine a conceptual artist who has composed music even for David Bowiehas made experimental films, led the creative scene of his time. A woman as fascinating as she is unknown because I don’t even know his nameonly it’s X.
Her story, that of X, will not be told by her, but his wife, after this charismatic figure passes away, leaving behind a great void and a lot of questions.
And then, the good comes. We are not faced with a biography, nor even before a process of detective investigation about the origins of ‘uchrony’ Over the USA that poses a alternative history from the 40s to the present, which is based on a totalitarian system that was in charge of building a wall between the southern and northern territories of the country, as if the Civil War was present in our days through a fascist system that forces its citizens to follow a series of religious restrictions in which, of course, the woman is worthless.
A new formulation of The Handmaid’s Tale of Margaret Atwood? Catherine Lacey goes even further in this surprising and revealing novel.
How would the author herself define this absolutely overwhelming novel? “I think, above all, it is a love story from the perspective of the person who has been abandoned, betrayed and who is trying to find some meaning in their life. “All the other elements that appear, X’s artwork, are an excuse to tell his true story,” Catherine Lacey tells Infobae Spain.
The author thinks that, when you are in love from someone, whether in a positive way or toxic, it becomes your world, your only sphere and vital concern. And that is what happens here with the main character, a journalist who falls in love with a fascinating creature about whose past she had not the slightest idea. Until she investigated and discovered that she came from those southern territories and that she was a true anarchist. She even had a son (spoiler).
-How did you conceive the character of X? Because she has no voice of her own in the novel, but she is the only true protagonist.
-“I think we could consider it a kind of abstraction, a combination of a series of artists that I like. It is also a idea about the 20th century, could have ‘rewritten’ the history of the United States through its creation. I like that idea that one female artist taken into account within such a panorama patriarchal”.
Catherine Lacey likes it escape from conventions, open doors to reflection and interpretation. That’s why he likes cinema Julia Ducournauwinner of the Palme d’Or for titanof Andrea Arnold and from Argentina Lucrecia Martel.
But let’s talk about the ‘dystopia’ that he proposes. “I wanted to imagine what the story of a couple who I wasn’t heterosexual and that he was outside of everything. What would happen if a woman artist were ‘queer’ in an absolutely repressive world?”
He says that then he began to think about the 19th century, when there were many political factions and there were even anarchists, like the figure of Emma Goldman that appears in the novel. What if his ideas had penetrated the collective subconscious?
“I think there was a time in the United States when there was a greater range of political options, until a consensus was reached. extreme polarization: or you are republican either democrator are you from right or of left. That’s why I thought it would be interesting to modify the story to see what would happen and confront it with the religious extremism”.
And here’s the thing. When extremism appears, walls are also formed, divisions. And the wars. It can be in Berlinin Korea and now in Palestinein Ukraine. History always repeats itself. He hatred and intolerance, also. “I just wanted to write a book about two womenbut the point is that the divisions are still present and, in that aspect, it is inevitable to talk about the advance of the far right and the loss of freedoms.”
The author says that she took all the dystopia she proposes from history books. Everything, in reality, is there, in our past, we just have to link it with our present, nothing difficult. “I do not believe that the United States is exempt from a Civil warI believe that there are cycles of construction and destruction and we are in that discouraging moment in which fundamental rights are restricted, such as abortion”says the author forcefully.
And, now, let’s tell what X was like. One radical artist who didn’t mind saying that creation had ‘gone to shit’, which was condescending to the ‘establishment’ and, therefore, accommodating and unprovoked. Domesticated and sick.
“I want to think that there are artists who dare to break with everything, who are taking risks. But it is true that what remains is what is successful, and it does not always have to do with quality,” says a person who has taken ten years to write this book.
“There are things that are transgressive and super ‘cool’ and others that are a trash that depress you the most. It is like eat empty caloriesthey fill you up, but they do not nourish you and, therefore, you cannot stop consuming, but it makes sense in the society in which we live, absolutely precarious”.
