X could be anything
"X could be anything. She can also be anywhere. Hers was a “groundbreaking, multihyphenate career.” You know who X is. You’ve waited for her to show up, gotten scared once she she did, she would never get mistaken for someone else at a party. You’ve praised her to her face, insulted her to her back. You’ve dismissed the fiction and praised the journalism. Gump as a verb, to describe the act of an author photoshopping into history their creations, has appeared in more than one book review lately, and gumping is part of Lacey’s strategy here. We read about X brainstorming with David Bowie, dashing off arthouse novels on Sontag-levels of speed, and performing the performance art that inspires Republicans to defund the NEA. Richard Serra marks X an “art cunt.” By that I think Richard Serra means how Don DeLillo describes Klara Sax in Underworld: “She looked famous and rare, famous even to herself, famous alone making a salad in the kitchen.” X charms the New York gallerist who “sells it, but doesn’t particularly like any of it,” teaches an FBI agent “how to do a fake beard,” leads a gothic ex-lover to the conclusion “there’s no such thing as the past,” and raises dachshunds in Connecticut with the African American starter wife. She accepts industry awards wearing dark sunglasses, tells Barbara Walters on national television she’d prefer to remain a “shadowy figure,” tells Brian Lehrer on WNYC she “believes very strongly in fascism and that we need a dictatorial right-wing tyranny.” We need a drink...
