What do you think?
Rate this book
Red #1
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse
The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.
Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.
"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." -- The Village Voice
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
National book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.
"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." -- The Village Voice
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
National book Critics Circle Award Finalist
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 1998
About the author
Anne Carson
85 books4,383 followersAnne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980 to 1987. She was a 1998 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also won a Lannan Literary Award.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,922 reviews
August 13, 2007
Oh, you should read this book. It's smart and sweet and tender and original. It's erotic, but just under your skin. It's a novel in verse, but don't let that deter you. You can pick it up off the shelf and settle into a big armchair in the bookstore and read the whole thing for free in an hour (even relishing and re-reading parts). But then you'll probably want to buy it anyway so that you can take it home and sleep with it under your pillow for the rest of your life.
April 3, 2024
“Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.”
Autobiography of Red ~~ Anne Carson
Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red took my breath away. I don't think I've felt this way about a book since I first discovered Virginia Woolf. I was stunned by Carson's poetic novel.
Autobiography of Red is packed with so many emotions, perhaps the most glaring is Geryon ~~ the protagonist’s ~~ continual struggle with loneliness and loss ~~ something I can relate to all to well. From an early age, Geryon must deal with a great loss that would devastate any child ~~ the loss of a parent. While Carson doesn’t provide much insight, it’s implied that Geryon’s mother and father are not together. Every second Tuesday in winter Geryon’s father and brother went to hockey practice. / Geryon and his mother had supper alone. Not only is Geryon without a father figure in the household, but also, it seems that Geryon does not see his father at all, as the brother does. This would be difficult for any child to cope with.
This creates a feeling of loss and loneliness that permeates the entire house. Geryon and his mother eat supper alone; while their mother works, Geryon and his brother are babysat. Autobiography of Red is full of moments when Geryon completely experiences loneliness. In a loss of innocence and trust, his brother molests him ~~ and there is nothing he can do nothing about it ~~ he’s afraid to go to his mother, and his father’s nowhere to be see – this leaves Geryon feeling even more isolated and alone. When Geryon and his mother are alone in the house, they turn on all the lights in every room ~~ even in the rooms they have no intention of being in. Why? Well, it’s a defense against desolation. Turning on all the lights makes them feel less alone. Fear is equated with darkness in this world. In this world even the empty fruit bowl is equated with loneliness.
But, Geryon’s journey is also a journey of self-awareness, discovery, and acceptance. The entire novel concerns itself with the battle between inside versus outside ~~ physically, spiritually, sexually, literally, and metaphorically. Geryon’s early life is built around his inner world rather than the world around him. He is the opposite of most children.
Geryon’s world changes drastically when he’s becomes a love struck adolescent. Like all of us, puberty alters Geryon’s outlook in magical ways. After befriending, and falling in love with Herakles, Geryon begins to live outside of himself ~~ even the scenes shift from inside to outside. When Geryon visits Herakles’ house they spend their time outside on the lawn or the back porch. Together they take road trips together. As Geryon becomes more involved with Herakles, he inhabits the outside world. Our hero is no longer lonely.
Subsequently, when Geryon and Herakles separate, we initially see Geryon slide backwards into his old self. He returns home to his mother. Their home is now filled with tension. With Herakles no longer in the picture, Geryon experiences a crisis like none he’s ever known before. He now needs to know who he is. This is a far cry from the inner world Geryon experienced as a boy ~~ before he came to begin accepting himself. Now that he’s aware of his desires, and sexual orientation, he can no longer hide himself from the world.
Years later Geryon comes across Herakles on a trip to Argentina. Herakles' new lover Ancash forms the third point of a love triangle. The novel ends, ambiguously, with Geryon, Ancash, and Herakles stopping outside a ...
At last, Geryon is transformed. He’s less self-loathing, less depressed, not fully satisfied, but having experienced and learned so much; from philosophers and photography and lovers, from receiving whooping from Herakles’ current lover, Ancash, to accepting himself for who and what he is, he finally chooses to live.
In the end, I have to agree with Alice Munro. "This book is amazing–I haven’t discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing."
Autobiography of Red ~~ Anne Carson
Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red took my breath away. I don't think I've felt this way about a book since I first discovered Virginia Woolf. I was stunned by Carson's poetic novel.
Autobiography of Red is packed with so many emotions, perhaps the most glaring is Geryon ~~ the protagonist’s ~~ continual struggle with loneliness and loss ~~ something I can relate to all to well. From an early age, Geryon must deal with a great loss that would devastate any child ~~ the loss of a parent. While Carson doesn’t provide much insight, it’s implied that Geryon’s mother and father are not together. Every second Tuesday in winter Geryon’s father and brother went to hockey practice. / Geryon and his mother had supper alone. Not only is Geryon without a father figure in the household, but also, it seems that Geryon does not see his father at all, as the brother does. This would be difficult for any child to cope with.
This creates a feeling of loss and loneliness that permeates the entire house. Geryon and his mother eat supper alone; while their mother works, Geryon and his brother are babysat. Autobiography of Red is full of moments when Geryon completely experiences loneliness. In a loss of innocence and trust, his brother molests him ~~ and there is nothing he can do nothing about it ~~ he’s afraid to go to his mother, and his father’s nowhere to be see – this leaves Geryon feeling even more isolated and alone. When Geryon and his mother are alone in the house, they turn on all the lights in every room ~~ even in the rooms they have no intention of being in. Why? Well, it’s a defense against desolation. Turning on all the lights makes them feel less alone. Fear is equated with darkness in this world. In this world even the empty fruit bowl is equated with loneliness.
But, Geryon’s journey is also a journey of self-awareness, discovery, and acceptance. The entire novel concerns itself with the battle between inside versus outside ~~ physically, spiritually, sexually, literally, and metaphorically. Geryon’s early life is built around his inner world rather than the world around him. He is the opposite of most children.
Geryon’s world changes drastically when he’s becomes a love struck adolescent. Like all of us, puberty alters Geryon’s outlook in magical ways. After befriending, and falling in love with Herakles, Geryon begins to live outside of himself ~~ even the scenes shift from inside to outside. When Geryon visits Herakles’ house they spend their time outside on the lawn or the back porch. Together they take road trips together. As Geryon becomes more involved with Herakles, he inhabits the outside world. Our hero is no longer lonely.
Subsequently, when Geryon and Herakles separate, we initially see Geryon slide backwards into his old self. He returns home to his mother. Their home is now filled with tension. With Herakles no longer in the picture, Geryon experiences a crisis like none he’s ever known before. He now needs to know who he is. This is a far cry from the inner world Geryon experienced as a boy ~~ before he came to begin accepting himself. Now that he’s aware of his desires, and sexual orientation, he can no longer hide himself from the world.
Years later Geryon comes across Herakles on a trip to Argentina. Herakles' new lover Ancash forms the third point of a love triangle. The novel ends, ambiguously, with Geryon, Ancash, and Herakles stopping outside a ...
At last, Geryon is transformed. He’s less self-loathing, less depressed, not fully satisfied, but having experienced and learned so much; from philosophers and photography and lovers, from receiving whooping from Herakles’ current lover, Ancash, to accepting himself for who and what he is, he finally chooses to live.
In the end, I have to agree with Alice Munro. "This book is amazing–I haven’t discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing."
June 4, 2023
Anne Carson transforms the poem Geryoneis into what could possibly be the greatest queer coming-of-age tale ever. Yet this isn't just about coming to accept yourself, but also as a part of larger, selfless world. Read this for Pride Month, read this in any month, read this many times over. An absolute gem.
It’s my birthday so I stayed up way to late rereading this little masterpiece and I don’t regret it. Review to come.
It’s my birthday so I stayed up way to late rereading this little masterpiece and I don’t regret it. Review to come.
July 12, 2020
"Who can a monster blame for being red?"
January 14, 2018
If this is poetry, then I guess I don't really understand
what poetry is.
If it's not about rhyme, or meter, sound, or the controlled use of precise, flowing,
poetic language,
then it seems to resemble prose exactly, but with arbitrary
line-breaks,
which does not preclude it from being a beautiful story
about heartbreak,
and growing up, one that is deeply moving, and filled with powerful
imagery,
just that I felt distracted by the form, driven to constantly question
why it is written
in this way: perhaps in imitation and homage to the original work
of Stesichoros,
but then why forsake all of the basic elements of poetry, that make it sing,
and give it power?
what poetry is.
If it's not about rhyme, or meter, sound, or the controlled use of precise, flowing,
poetic language,
then it seems to resemble prose exactly, but with arbitrary
line-breaks,
which does not preclude it from being a beautiful story
about heartbreak,
and growing up, one that is deeply moving, and filled with powerful
imagery,
just that I felt distracted by the form, driven to constantly question
why it is written
in this way: perhaps in imitation and homage to the original work
of Stesichoros,
but then why forsake all of the basic elements of poetry, that make it sing,
and give it power?
February 1, 2013
What do they think about? Floating in there. All night.
Nothing.
That's impossible.
Why?
You can't be alive and think about nothing. You can't but you're not a whale.
Why would it be different?
Why should it be the same? But I look in their eyes and I see them thinking.
Nonsense. It is yourself you see- it's guilt.
Guilt? Why would I be guilty about whales? Not my fault they're in a tank.
Exactly. So why are you guilty- whose tank are you in?
Australian goodreader Sean (account since nuked, sadly) wrote a review of Garden, Ashes (a wonderful book) on Christmas. He said it was his "Christmas miracle", saving the day. That had made me smile because I had felt that way about Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red. It may seem a bit weird to write that now because days after it have needed "saving". Some kind of weight on the empty place. It doesn't matter. It is enough to have it when I can have it. In the end he gets to fly, to swim. I just breathed. If you have to know how to look at it then I can look at it refracted through them. Just don't stop doing that.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
Geryon is a little boy and he goes to his mother. He stays by her side. They are up all night. They make dinner. They turn on every light in the house. Geryon saves the voices his mother makes when she reads to him. He keeps them safe by allowing the babysitter to read in voices she cannot get wrong, because they are not his mother's voices. She comes home to him when he is awake. He must have forgotten to stay awake for her. Would it ever be warmer than this. Days turn into nights and secrets. He meets him. Herakles on his red wing tips carrying dust. Folding back arms for a hug. She still folds his t-shirts. Mother can hug him no more. I wanted him to stay in that kitchen with his mother but he couldn't. I wonder if she turns on lights without him, or just watches the empty fruit bowl. Still life painting without the life subject. Geryon always cries when they make love. Herakles couldn't wait forever. He's so impatient I wonder if he's just waiting to get old. When he's old he'll be impatient to be young. Herakles hides on his grandmother's porch. I imagine he uses his grandmother as something of his own when he wants to shut out. He would use her as something of his own, like a secret, when he wants to invite in. This is where I live, my family, my end of the sofa. Geryon floats. Suspenders under his coat, wings kept in, he flies above the land to where the Nazis and Argentinians live. He studies volcanoes. Mountains with left over ashes and fires to be started kept within. Herakles comes back. Herakles has Ancash. Paintings that look like something from far away. When you get up close he is back in your bed. I wouldn't want to be in love with Herakles. I would be afraid to dance like Angela on My So-Called Life (to "Tears of the Sun") when she believes she's finally over Jordan Catalano. It's a dance to convince oneself. It's a denial and the only thing you can do. Don't want to find out if you're wrong. Geryon is close to the mountain. He could jump in, if he doesn't learn another place. He could have made a sacrifice. Autobiography of Red was my Christmas miracle when Geryon is okay without Herakles. I really needed that. No one can kill your red dog or anything if you can be okay with yourself. It's something about not wanting anyone else's secret. There is no power there anymore. Something about not living in dreams. Or maybe it was his new boyfriend sitting up in the cold outside. Would you look into the beluga whales and see only yourself in the tank or just wish they could swim and keep on. I'd put something with wings on top of that Christmas tree and light all the candles for that.
June 5, 2023
Got 30 pages in and immediately went and ordered everything Anne Carson has ever written.
June 9, 2010
Seldom have I seen a writer so maximize the balance between raw, grated, difficult, emotional pain and beautiful words that make me want to clutch them to my bosom and squeeze them with delight while making burbling noises of pleasure.
July 19, 2018
One of those books that everyone else loves and I just did not get, oops. Autobiography of Red has so many things I find relatable and should have liked more: a main character who experienced abuse in his childhood, a queer love story, and a plot that features the importance of art. Unfortunately this novel in verse did not resonate with me. I wanted more character development and a more substantial plot. Perhaps I do not "get" poetry or I have been spoiled by my favorite gay novels, including
A Little Life
and
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
. Even though I did not love this one I am glad others did.
September 27, 2023
The first time I read Anne Carson, I was pulled so deep in that in order to come afloat, I had to re-read the book immediately, anew.
Autobiography of Red
—my second time—was just as hypnotic, and all the better: once again I went back to the first word right after I took in the last. Lava—that red heat—takes ages to cool, but it seems to me there is no healing from the way this here has seared at my heart.
This 'novel in verse' is a reimagining of the reimagined: in the 6th century BCE, the Greek poet Stesichorus set myth free when he wrote of the 10th labour of Herakles (Hercules) through the life and death of its victim, the winged Geryon; Red transfigures Stesichorus' fragmentary poem into an entirely original tale of queer (in all the senses of the word) coming-of-age. Here, Geryon becomes a sensitive boy belonging to our own time, 'monstrous' only in his difference from others—his autistic sensibility, his loneliness and struggles with identity.
The nature of the epic too undergoes a startling, breathtaking change in Carson's hands, for here Herakles breaks not Geryon's skull but his heart.
Although Red ostensibly owes itself (as, according to Carson, most descriptive and perceptive writing does) to the Geryoneis of Stesichorus, at its heart lies the equally enigmatic work of another poet: Emily Dickinson.
Dickinson's seemingly inscrutable Poem #1748 is the epigraph that Carson sets the tone with—and indeed, Geryon is quite the "reticent volcano". The poem flows like magma beneath the surface of each chapter and each phase throughout Red, from surviving without a listener to "The only secret people keep": One way to look at this book is as an experiment in interpretation of Dickinson; another as one in interpreting ourselves.
In course of Red, Carson develops her own poetic: hers is not a poetry of rhyme and meter, but of meaning and attention, and she uses elements of poesy (the enjambment, the variant line) to draw us to the plot, to each place where she performs alchemy.
Needless to say, this book is not poetry, nor a novel. As with anything that Carson writes, it thrives in being difficult to box down—like a shadow. It makes one put in the work to get to its hot, bubbling core.
Needless to say, all that work is worth it.
This 'novel in verse' is a reimagining of the reimagined: in the 6th century BCE, the Greek poet Stesichorus set myth free when he wrote of the 10th labour of Herakles (Hercules) through the life and death of its victim, the winged Geryon; Red transfigures Stesichorus' fragmentary poem into an entirely original tale of queer (in all the senses of the word) coming-of-age. Here, Geryon becomes a sensitive boy belonging to our own time, 'monstrous' only in his difference from others—his autistic sensibility, his loneliness and struggles with identity.
The nature of the epic too undergoes a startling, breathtaking change in Carson's hands, for here Herakles breaks not Geryon's skull but his heart.
Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches.A love story—the labour of Geryon, if you may.
They were two superior eels
at the bottom of the tank and they each recognised each other like italics.
Although Red ostensibly owes itself (as, according to Carson, most descriptive and perceptive writing does) to the Geryoneis of Stesichorus, at its heart lies the equally enigmatic work of another poet: Emily Dickinson.
Dickinson's seemingly inscrutable Poem #1748 is the epigraph that Carson sets the tone with—and indeed, Geryon is quite the "reticent volcano". The poem flows like magma beneath the surface of each chapter and each phase throughout Red, from surviving without a listener to "The only secret people keep": One way to look at this book is as an experiment in interpretation of Dickinson; another as one in interpreting ourselves.
Like the terrestrial crust of the earth
which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul
is a miracle of mutual pressures.
In course of Red, Carson develops her own poetic: hers is not a poetry of rhyme and meter, but of meaning and attention, and she uses elements of poesy (the enjambment, the variant line) to draw us to the plot, to each place where she performs alchemy.
Needless to say, this book is not poetry, nor a novel. As with anything that Carson writes, it thrives in being difficult to box down—like a shadow. It makes one put in the work to get to its hot, bubbling core.
Needless to say, all that work is worth it.
A man moves through time. It means nothing except that,
like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.
January 4, 2019
While I do appreciate the imagery, at times it became annoyingly random:
Q:
Well Goodnight Then they said and drove him up
Those hemorrhaging stairs to the hot dry Arms
To the ticking red taxi of the incubus
Don’t want to go want to stay Downstairs and read (c)
Q:
When Geryon was little he loved to sleep but even more he loved to wake up.
He would run outside in his pajamas.
Hard morning winds were blowing life bolts against the sky each one blue enough
to begin a world of its own.
The word each blew towards him and came apart on the wind. Geryon had always
had this trouble: a word like each,
when he stared at it, would disassemble itself into separate letters and go.
A space for its meaning remained there but blank.
The letters themselves could be found hung on branches or furniture in the area.
What does each mean?
Q:
VI. MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN
Athena was looking down through the floor
Of the glass-bottomed boat Athena pointed
Zeus looked Him (c)
Q:
Q:
He loved lightning He lived on an island His mother was a
Nymph of a river that ran to the sea His father was a gold
Cutting tool Old scholia say that Stesichoros says that
Geryon had six hands and six feet and wings He was red and
His strange red cattle excited envy Herakles came and
Killed him for his cattle
The dog too (c)
Q:
They watched each other,
this odd pair. (c)
Q:
Pass down an alley then turn a corner and there it is. Volcano in a wall.
Do you see that, says Ancash.
Beautiful, Herakles breathes out. He is looking at the men.
I mean the fire, says Ancash.
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,
night at their back. (c)
Q:
Well Goodnight Then they said and drove him up
Those hemorrhaging stairs to the hot dry Arms
To the ticking red taxi of the incubus
Don’t want to go want to stay Downstairs and read (c)
Q:
When Geryon was little he loved to sleep but even more he loved to wake up.
He would run outside in his pajamas.
Hard morning winds were blowing life bolts against the sky each one blue enough
to begin a world of its own.
The word each blew towards him and came apart on the wind. Geryon had always
had this trouble: a word like each,
when he stared at it, would disassemble itself into separate letters and go.
A space for its meaning remained there but blank.
The letters themselves could be found hung on branches or furniture in the area.
What does each mean?
Q:
VI. MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN
Athena was looking down through the floor
Of the glass-bottomed boat Athena pointed
Zeus looked Him (c)
Q:
Q:
He loved lightning He lived on an island His mother was a
Nymph of a river that ran to the sea His father was a gold
Cutting tool Old scholia say that Stesichoros says that
Geryon had six hands and six feet and wings He was red and
His strange red cattle excited envy Herakles came and
Killed him for his cattle
The dog too (c)
Q:
They watched each other,
this odd pair. (c)
Q:
Pass down an alley then turn a corner and there it is. Volcano in a wall.
Do you see that, says Ancash.
Beautiful, Herakles breathes out. He is looking at the men.
I mean the fire, says Ancash.
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,
night at their back. (c)
September 10, 2011
I read this book when I was about twenty, and it was the greatest thing that I'd ever read. Then I purposely avoided rereading it for over a decade after that, terrified that it couldn't be as incredible as I remembered.
So recently I did have to reread it, for school. And no, it didn't do to me what it did the first time that I read it, and it no longer seems light years greater than any other book in human history. HOWEVER, it is still really great and one of my all-time favorites, and I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone, especially if you have any feeling at all in your heart for classicism. I wish it weren't cliche to say that Anne Carson is a goddess. Anne Carson is a goddess, and were I ever to build a temple or sacrifice mammals it would be to her.
So recently I did have to reread it, for school. And no, it didn't do to me what it did the first time that I read it, and it no longer seems light years greater than any other book in human history. HOWEVER, it is still really great and one of my all-time favorites, and I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone, especially if you have any feeling at all in your heart for classicism. I wish it weren't cliche to say that Anne Carson is a goddess. Anne Carson is a goddess, and were I ever to build a temple or sacrifice mammals it would be to her.
January 15, 2016
In my short life I have learned that short novels need to be read for as long as they can be. Then the good ones should be reread. This is a challenge. These short novels masquerade themselves as something that you can appreciate in a few hours of reading. Yes, you can read The Lover in an afternoon, or The Hour of the Star in a few hours on a park bench with a good coffee in hand, or you can sit with The Crying of Lot 49 one Tuesday evening and get through it all. If you have the ability to handle the cruelty, almost anything by Coetzee can be easily consumed in a single sitting with Glenn Gould's two recordings of the Goldberg Variations playing in the background. Yes, you can even enjoy them in that time. This is true. But I must give myself some space to contradict myself here. None of these books can be read in a few hours. Short novels are the hardest novels to write, they need space to breathe between rapturous reading sessions. They deserve time to become themselves in the same way that larger novels do. The good ones count among some of the best works of written words - give them life by giving them more time than they need.
I haven't done this yet with Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, though I did give it more than a week to grow and become something that lived with me for a while. That's a long time for a book that is only 150 pages long, and in poetry-ish form, and so those pages aren't all that full. I'll read it again though. This is a beautiful book, short story, poem, that deserves that extra time and extra effort. And it will reveal itself all the more.
Some reviews on GoodReads have gone to the trouble of capturing a perfect excerpt of writing from Red's story. I haven't done that - I've never done that for any of my reviews, though I have written some of these lines in a notebook I've reserved for wonderful writing from books which range from good to bad. Go read some of these excerpts. They won't make sense to you now. But come back after having finished the story, book, poem, and you will recall that moment perfectly. It will likely have a stronger impact than it did when you first read it, or when you read through the poem chapter a second time to make sense of whatever emotion it was that you felt in that flicker. Something about this prose drills into your brain.
Which is interesting in the best way possible.
This is a simple coming-of-age story, where the life of the protagonist, Geryon, is placed in relation with that of Herakles. If you know your ancient Greek poetry these names might mean something to you. They didn't to me. Well, Herakles did, but only because of childhood stories and Disney movies and painted Greek pottery and silly adult erotic fantasies I've acquired about perfect hulking male bodies. Regardless, this simple coming-of-age story, taking for its inspiration ancient Greek epic poems, is as far as possible from being either Ancient or Greek or simple as can be imagined.
It is set in the modern day, in South America and America-ish. It is set in both the real and unreal world, and the line between the two is ubiquitous and invisible.
It is highly original in form and shape and approach.
It is beautifully written. Shockingly well-written. Remarkably well-written.
It is heart-breaking and honest and at times its vulnerability is nothing short of disruptive.
It has profound things to say about relationships and adequacy.
It is humanity and human and monstrous. All of this is important in this poem, short story, novel, but you must figure out why on your own.
I don't cry why I read, because I'm a man and I think that means I can only cry in shower or something like that. And so saying that this book made me cry would be a lie and I don't like to misrepresent either myself or the ways in which twenty-first century masculinity in Saskatchewan has profoundly damaged my ability to be my natural self, but there is a moment in this book that has left me profoundly sad. I related to it far too well. It is captured in one word - which those who have read the poem, short story, novel will recall.
Degrading.
Good lord that word has so much weight. What a monster this book has unleashed!
And the most horrible thing is that the intimacy which makes that word so ugly in this book is a result of those very same silly adult erotic fantasies I've acquired about perfect hulking male bodies. Monstrosity turns me on. Dammit.
The Autobiography of Red is worth a week's worth of reading, deserves a spot on your shelf, and is more than worthy of the second reading that it will certainly end up getting after you set it down and let it breathe and unsettle you. If this isn't a book that is taking up some space in your home, I suggest you go out and pick it up.
I haven't done this yet with Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, though I did give it more than a week to grow and become something that lived with me for a while. That's a long time for a book that is only 150 pages long, and in poetry-ish form, and so those pages aren't all that full. I'll read it again though. This is a beautiful book, short story, poem, that deserves that extra time and extra effort. And it will reveal itself all the more.
Some reviews on GoodReads have gone to the trouble of capturing a perfect excerpt of writing from Red's story. I haven't done that - I've never done that for any of my reviews, though I have written some of these lines in a notebook I've reserved for wonderful writing from books which range from good to bad. Go read some of these excerpts. They won't make sense to you now. But come back after having finished the story, book, poem, and you will recall that moment perfectly. It will likely have a stronger impact than it did when you first read it, or when you read through the poem chapter a second time to make sense of whatever emotion it was that you felt in that flicker. Something about this prose drills into your brain.
Which is interesting in the best way possible.
This is a simple coming-of-age story, where the life of the protagonist, Geryon, is placed in relation with that of Herakles. If you know your ancient Greek poetry these names might mean something to you. They didn't to me. Well, Herakles did, but only because of childhood stories and Disney movies and painted Greek pottery and silly adult erotic fantasies I've acquired about perfect hulking male bodies. Regardless, this simple coming-of-age story, taking for its inspiration ancient Greek epic poems, is as far as possible from being either Ancient or Greek or simple as can be imagined.
It is set in the modern day, in South America and America-ish. It is set in both the real and unreal world, and the line between the two is ubiquitous and invisible.
It is highly original in form and shape and approach.
It is beautifully written. Shockingly well-written. Remarkably well-written.
It is heart-breaking and honest and at times its vulnerability is nothing short of disruptive.
It has profound things to say about relationships and adequacy.
It is humanity and human and monstrous. All of this is important in this poem, short story, novel, but you must figure out why on your own.
I don't cry why I read, because I'm a man and I think that means I can only cry in shower or something like that. And so saying that this book made me cry would be a lie and I don't like to misrepresent either myself or the ways in which twenty-first century masculinity in Saskatchewan has profoundly damaged my ability to be my natural self, but there is a moment in this book that has left me profoundly sad. I related to it far too well. It is captured in one word - which those who have read the poem, short story, novel will recall.
Degrading.
Good lord that word has so much weight. What a monster this book has unleashed!
And the most horrible thing is that the intimacy which makes that word so ugly in this book is a result of those very same silly adult erotic fantasies I've acquired about perfect hulking male bodies. Monstrosity turns me on. Dammit.
The Autobiography of Red is worth a week's worth of reading, deserves a spot on your shelf, and is more than worthy of the second reading that it will certainly end up getting after you set it down and let it breathe and unsettle you. If this isn't a book that is taking up some space in your home, I suggest you go out and pick it up.
June 17, 2024
Perhaps it's because I don't understand poetry, and I really don't. There were glimpses of something, some connection or beauty while I was reading this; I can't deny it. But the story itself was so feeble and insubstantial. It's a long melancholy sigh. I was craving something, even one thing, to emotionally anchor me, and it never happened. Perhaps it just went over my head, but then I read a few professional reviews of this book and they didn't add anything to my understanding, if there was something to understand. But I'm still not done with Carson.
January 15, 2020
I really loved the translated section of this—I think Anne Carson has a way of conveying thoughts and feelings that is impressive to say the least. I do not know if I can say the rest of this resonated with me.
I began very much loving this, but the second half meanders, never really coming to any kind of release for me—and I didn’t find what was in between quite good enough to ignore that. The language is very beautiful. The story in outline is brilliant. I felt it never built to the release I desired.
Nevertheless, here is a list of quotes from this that resonated with me:
All these darlings said Geryon and now me
are there many little boys who think they are a monster?
The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not
Like honey is the sleep of the just
Facts are bigger in the dark
the difference between outside and inside
inside is mine
He cooly omitted all outside things
What’s your favorite weapon? Cage
They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics
What is it like to be a woman listening in the dark?
I think you are a confusing subject and object
the terrestrial crust or the earth which is proportionally ten times thinner than an eggshell
Even in dreams he doesn’t know me at all
the human custom of wrong love
What is time made of? A meaning that we impose upon motion
Whose tank are you in?
Who can a monster blame for being red?
Now a hunger was walking with them.
Desire is no light thing.
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | Youtube | About |
I began very much loving this, but the second half meanders, never really coming to any kind of release for me—and I didn’t find what was in between quite good enough to ignore that. The language is very beautiful. The story in outline is brilliant. I felt it never built to the release I desired.
Nevertheless, here is a list of quotes from this that resonated with me:
All these darlings said Geryon and now me
are there many little boys who think they are a monster?
The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not
Like honey is the sleep of the just
Facts are bigger in the dark
the difference between outside and inside
inside is mine
He cooly omitted all outside things
What’s your favorite weapon? Cage
They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics
What is it like to be a woman listening in the dark?
I think you are a confusing subject and object
the terrestrial crust or the earth which is proportionally ten times thinner than an eggshell
Even in dreams he doesn’t know me at all
the human custom of wrong love
What is time made of? A meaning that we impose upon motion
Whose tank are you in?
Who can a monster blame for being red?
Now a hunger was walking with them.
Desire is no light thing.
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | Youtube | About |
August 7, 2022
I grabbed this at the library before leaving for the beach. I had not really researched it much at all other than seeing that I had put it on my 'priority' list some time in the past. I devoured it in a single sitting. It has a mythological beginning/end, but the main story is just beautiful prose, telling a story, with subtlety in meanings that had me read passages twice to gather the beauty and full explanation.
Geryon starts as a young boy of 6, proceeds to 14, then to somewhere in his 20's. Some triggers as a boy as his older brothers explores him more than he should. As a teen, he finds a slightly older boy that captures his heart. He finds him again in his 20's, but should they really try to rekindle that teen crush? Geryon knew he must not go back into the cloud. Desire is no light thing. Especially since Herakles has moved on to another man (Ancash), who in turn infatuates Geryon in this triangle.
And the fantasy twist is that Geryon is the Red Monster with wings. I liked the philosophical characters that come into this story to talk with Geryon. This was a very thought provoking book. I felt I greatly liked the ending. This felt so much like many of us as we've moved beyond our first crush, but still in a tangle of questions as time moves on.
I was thinking about time - he gropes - you know how apart people are in time together and apart at the same time - stops.
This is 5*/favorite territory for me.
I was highlighting via pencil some passages early in this book. As I went on, I was highlighting more. By the end, I was putting pencil parenthesis around whole sections and pages. I think I may need to buy a copy of this book!
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
Geryon starts as a young boy of 6, proceeds to 14, then to somewhere in his 20's. Some triggers as a boy as his older brothers explores him more than he should. As a teen, he finds a slightly older boy that captures his heart. He finds him again in his 20's, but should they really try to rekindle that teen crush? Geryon knew he must not go back into the cloud. Desire is no light thing. Especially since Herakles has moved on to another man (Ancash), who in turn infatuates Geryon in this triangle.
And the fantasy twist is that Geryon is the Red Monster with wings. I liked the philosophical characters that come into this story to talk with Geryon. This was a very thought provoking book. I felt I greatly liked the ending. This felt so much like many of us as we've moved beyond our first crush, but still in a tangle of questions as time moves on.
I was thinking about time - he gropes - you know how apart people are in time together and apart at the same time - stops.
This is 5*/favorite territory for me.
I was highlighting via pencil some passages early in this book. As I went on, I was highlighting more. By the end, I was putting pencil parenthesis around whole sections and pages. I think I may need to buy a copy of this book!
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
May 17, 2023
En Karson sam znao kao stvaralačku prevoditeljku sa starogrčkog i latinskog, koja je antičke klasike učinila savremenicima mladima anglofonog sveta. U zlatno doba tamblera, blogovi koje sam pratio, bili su preplavljeni odlomcima iz njenih prevoda tragedija. Zvučali su kao intimna ispovedna poezija dvadestog veka, daleko od ozbiljnih tirada u metru sa fusnotama u kojima prevoditelj na deset stranica drami nad nemogućnošću prevoda jedne grčke reči u svojoj višeznačnosti u mnogostrukost značenja reči nekog drugog jezika, pretvarajući tragediju u meta-tragediju jezika. Naravno, svako srećno društvo zaslužuje i takve prevode, ali pretpostavljam da ljudi lakše doživljaju, kako reče Aristotel, sažaljenje i strah čitajući oslobođene prevode kanadske pesnikinje. Znao sam i za Karsoninu lucidnost i išćašenost kroz nekoliko poetskih eseja. I dalje tvrdim da je „Albertina, vežba“ jedan od najduhovitijih i najpromoćurnijih tekstova koje sam ikada pročitao.
„Autobiografija crvenog“ bi bila moja prva pročitana Karsonina knjiga. Reč je o svaštožanru, ali uslovno ga možemo odložiti u fioku romana u stihu. Većina prikaza započinje insitiranjem da je reč o modernom preoblikovanju „Gerionide“, poeme antičkog pesnika Stesihora, koju danas imamo sačuvanu samo u fragmentima i koja peva Heraklov 10. zadatak: Heraklovo ubistvo crvenog čudovišta Geriona i otimanje njegovog stada. Međutim, realizacija moderne adaptacije se temelji na „štosu“. Stesihor se pamti kao onaj koji je inventivno pristupao mitologiji i menjao je i Homerovo i Hesiodovo nasleđe, te je, između ostalog, ostao zapamćen po tvrdnji da Helena i nije bila u Troji, već da je celi Trojanski rat provela u Egiptu, dok je u Ilionu bila samo njena utvara. U prevodu, Stesihor je bio najveći trol antičke mitopeje. Tako i ovde, čitalac očekuje herojsku borbu, a Karson mu „uvaljuje“ savremenu tinejdzersku ljubavnu priču, a i to mu izvači ispod nogu. Merlo Pontijeva percepcija, burgeri, Hajdergerova koncepcija vremena, poetika Virdžinije Vulf, jezik Kečua indijanaca, vizija i revizija, telo, poezija Emili Dikinson mešaju se sa literalnim štosevima i ironijom, fotografijom, Čarli Parkerom i crvenom bojom, parodijom, apsurdom, vulkanima, morskim prasićima i fantastikom, a sve mozaički oblikuje univerzalnu i dirljivu fabulu o dečaku Gerionu, koji se oseća kao čudovište, o traganju za identiteom i o susretu sa Heraklom na autobuskoj stanici kada se dogodio jedan od onih „trenutaka koji su sušta suprotnost slepilu“ i kada se dvoje „međusobno prepoznaju poput kurziva“ iliti fin i povučen dečko se zaljubljuje u balvana.
Ova knjiga je redak primer kako nešto može u isti mah da bude lako prohodno i hermetično, spontano i preosmišljeno do najsitnijeg detalja, duhovito i akademski eruditno, trivijalno i originalno. Ubeđen sam da se autorka super zabavljala dok ju je pisala. I čitalac je pozvan da se zabavlja. Pored Stesihora, podjednako važan za ovu knjigu je i najpoznatiji trol moderne književnosti - Gertruda Stajn. U poslednjem poglavlju, intervjuu sa Stesihorom, postoji i vraćanje na ono njeno „rose is a rose is a rose“, jer u akrostihu, koji je bio nemoguć preneti kroz prevod, postoji to isisisisisis i ono se aktuelizuje u pesnikovom odgovoru na razliku između morskog praseta i vulkana. Ovde se „isisisisis“ pretvorilo – putem razlike generisane ponavljanjem – od tvrdnje o postojanju „is is“ u ontološko pitanje „is is?“. A iza svega toga se krije Isis iliti Izida, boginja sa 1000 lica, kao univerzalna figura čitanja, čitanja kao vaskrsavanja iz fragmenata i onih iz ovih knjige i onih iz drugih knjga i onih fragmenata koje izvlačimo iz sebe tokom čitanja. Ili, ako bismo se vratili na početak knjige, kako kaže sama autorka: „Brojevi fragmenata govore otprilike kojim redom su ti parčići ispadali iz kutije. Kutiju, naravno, možete da tresete i dalje. Verujte mi zbog mesa i zbog mene, kao što kaže Gertruda Stajn. Izvolite, tresite“.
„Autobiografija crvenog“ bi bila moja prva pročitana Karsonina knjiga. Reč je o svaštožanru, ali uslovno ga možemo odložiti u fioku romana u stihu. Većina prikaza započinje insitiranjem da je reč o modernom preoblikovanju „Gerionide“, poeme antičkog pesnika Stesihora, koju danas imamo sačuvanu samo u fragmentima i koja peva Heraklov 10. zadatak: Heraklovo ubistvo crvenog čudovišta Geriona i otimanje njegovog stada. Međutim, realizacija moderne adaptacije se temelji na „štosu“. Stesihor se pamti kao onaj koji je inventivno pristupao mitologiji i menjao je i Homerovo i Hesiodovo nasleđe, te je, između ostalog, ostao zapamćen po tvrdnji da Helena i nije bila u Troji, već da je celi Trojanski rat provela u Egiptu, dok je u Ilionu bila samo njena utvara. U prevodu, Stesihor je bio najveći trol antičke mitopeje. Tako i ovde, čitalac očekuje herojsku borbu, a Karson mu „uvaljuje“ savremenu tinejdzersku ljubavnu priču, a i to mu izvači ispod nogu. Merlo Pontijeva percepcija, burgeri, Hajdergerova koncepcija vremena, poetika Virdžinije Vulf, jezik Kečua indijanaca, vizija i revizija, telo, poezija Emili Dikinson mešaju se sa literalnim štosevima i ironijom, fotografijom, Čarli Parkerom i crvenom bojom, parodijom, apsurdom, vulkanima, morskim prasićima i fantastikom, a sve mozaički oblikuje univerzalnu i dirljivu fabulu o dečaku Gerionu, koji se oseća kao čudovište, o traganju za identiteom i o susretu sa Heraklom na autobuskoj stanici kada se dogodio jedan od onih „trenutaka koji su sušta suprotnost slepilu“ i kada se dvoje „međusobno prepoznaju poput kurziva“ iliti fin i povučen dečko se zaljubljuje u balvana.
Ova knjiga je redak primer kako nešto može u isti mah da bude lako prohodno i hermetično, spontano i preosmišljeno do najsitnijeg detalja, duhovito i akademski eruditno, trivijalno i originalno. Ubeđen sam da se autorka super zabavljala dok ju je pisala. I čitalac je pozvan da se zabavlja. Pored Stesihora, podjednako važan za ovu knjigu je i najpoznatiji trol moderne književnosti - Gertruda Stajn. U poslednjem poglavlju, intervjuu sa Stesihorom, postoji i vraćanje na ono njeno „rose is a rose is a rose“, jer u akrostihu, koji je bio nemoguć preneti kroz prevod, postoji to isisisisisis i ono se aktuelizuje u pesnikovom odgovoru na razliku između morskog praseta i vulkana. Ovde se „isisisisis“ pretvorilo – putem razlike generisane ponavljanjem – od tvrdnje o postojanju „is is“ u ontološko pitanje „is is?“. A iza svega toga se krije Isis iliti Izida, boginja sa 1000 lica, kao univerzalna figura čitanja, čitanja kao vaskrsavanja iz fragmenata i onih iz ovih knjige i onih iz drugih knjga i onih fragmenata koje izvlačimo iz sebe tokom čitanja. Ili, ako bismo se vratili na početak knjige, kako kaže sama autorka: „Brojevi fragmenata govore otprilike kojim redom su ti parčići ispadali iz kutije. Kutiju, naravno, možete da tresete i dalje. Verujte mi zbog mesa i zbog mene, kao što kaže Gertruda Stajn. Izvolite, tresite“.
November 29, 2022
I’m on BookTube now! =)
”Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
The thing with poetry books is that they always leave up a lot of things for interpretation. You cannot go into them expecting them to make a distinct point. Poetry meanders, comes back to its originals just to leave them again and to throw another question at your feet. It challenges and forces you to deal with everything that’s mentioned and hinted at. No, to read poetry is definitely no easy feat, yet I still love to do it every once in a while. It keeps me on my toes and causes me to think outside of the box and that’s always a good thing in my book.
”The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not”
This said I really enjoyed reading “Autobiography of Red”. Carson has a unique way to tell her story and to follow Geryon’s character was extremely intriguing. It takes a while to get into the story but once you found the rhythm and flow of the tale you can’t help but wonder where it will take you. I found Carson’s choice to take Greek mythology and to put it into our modern world pretty impressive and bold. It’s a noteworthy choice and gave the entire story an edge I would have never been able to anticipate, yet the themes that are tackled could be found in ancient mythology as well.
”The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.”
“Autobiography of Red” follows Geryon and his life on earth. In Greek mythology Geryon was a red winged monster that was slain by Herakles, in this poetry novel he’s a person who is trying to figure out his life and sexuality. There are many different topics that are tackled in this short book, sexual abuse, bullying, sexual identity and disfigurement just to mention some of them. If you read between the lines there are plenty of things to discuss, for instance the relationship between Geryon and Herakles as well as their relationship with Ancash a mutual friend.
”The effort it took to pull himself
away from Herakles’ eyes
could have been measured on the scale devised by Richter.”
As I already said poetry leaves a lot of room for subjective interpretation but what I could gather from the story and how I interpret it is that Geryon is a very lonely person. His mother is affectionate but doesn’t know how to support her son. She’s not only unaware of the bullying at school but also doesn’t notice the ongoing sexual abuse by Geryon’s own brother. Geryon’s world is pretty dark and the atmosphere of the book makes sure to convey this feeling every step of the way. When Geryon meets Herakles and falls in love with him he begins to question his sexuality and this starts his process of finding himself. The relationship between Geryon and Herakles feels kind of toxic because even though their feelings seem to be mutual at first Herakles leaves him with a broken heart and this ultimately causes Geryon to fall into a depression.
”He saw the doorway
the house the night the world and
on the other side of the world somewhere Herakles laughing drinking getting into a car and Geryon's
whole body formed one arch of a cry - upcast to that custom, the human custom of wrong love."
Years later they meet in Peru and Geryon’s conflicting feelings begin to overwhelm him once again. Geryon is aware of all the prying eyes and tries to keep his distance, but Herakles won’t let him be, taking the role of a predator that wants to seduce him. Ultimately Geryon is too weak to push him away. This was a really interesting shift in their dynamic because in the original myth Herakles is the hero that kills Geryon. Carson reverses their roles and makes “the monster” the victim which forces her readers to think outside of the box. I personally think it’s also a nod to the original Greek myth, because in fact Geryon was Herakles’s victim in the tale as well. Geryon was only killed by Herakles because it was his tenth task to steal Geryon’s herd of red bulls and after Herakles slayed Orthos and Eurytion Geryon challenged him to a duel which ended with his death.
”Aren’t you cold?” said Geryon to Ancash who had no coat on. No, said Ancash.
Then he looked sideways at Geryon.
Well actually yes. He smiled. Geryon would have liked to wrap his coat around
this feather man. They walked on.”
As for the role of Ancash, their mutual friend in Peru? I’m still not all too sure what to make of his character, but I think Carson created him to point out Herakles’ abuse. Ancash doesn’t approve of Herakles’ advances and Geryon’s feelings for him, but I also got the feeling that he was jealous?! His character certainly acted as some sort of catalyst and pushed the story along. Honestly, if any of you read “Autobiography of Red” I’d love to hear your thoughts on Ancash. I still don’t know how to place him. XD
All told, to read “Autobiography of Red” was a very weird, yet at the same time intriguing experience. I still don’t know what to make of the ending but I guess Carson left it that way on purpose. It’s the reader’s choice how to interpret it and I think that’s good the way it is. ;-)
_____________________________
This must have been one of the weidest, yet also one of the most interesting books I've ever read.
There is so much left to interpretation and my mind just can't wrap around it all. I dunno if I'll be able to write a proper review about this but I'll try?
_____________________________
V, reading poetry?
Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I’m actually reading a poetry novel and this one came highly recommended by one of my fellow BookTubers and his friend who’s an actual literature professor!
They both said I should read this so here I am. ;-)
Very curious about this one because the blurb sounds pretty promising.
Find me on:
My Blog
Instagram
”Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
The thing with poetry books is that they always leave up a lot of things for interpretation. You cannot go into them expecting them to make a distinct point. Poetry meanders, comes back to its originals just to leave them again and to throw another question at your feet. It challenges and forces you to deal with everything that’s mentioned and hinted at. No, to read poetry is definitely no easy feat, yet I still love to do it every once in a while. It keeps me on my toes and causes me to think outside of the box and that’s always a good thing in my book.
”The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not”
This said I really enjoyed reading “Autobiography of Red”. Carson has a unique way to tell her story and to follow Geryon’s character was extremely intriguing. It takes a while to get into the story but once you found the rhythm and flow of the tale you can’t help but wonder where it will take you. I found Carson’s choice to take Greek mythology and to put it into our modern world pretty impressive and bold. It’s a noteworthy choice and gave the entire story an edge I would have never been able to anticipate, yet the themes that are tackled could be found in ancient mythology as well.
”The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.”
“Autobiography of Red” follows Geryon and his life on earth. In Greek mythology Geryon was a red winged monster that was slain by Herakles, in this poetry novel he’s a person who is trying to figure out his life and sexuality. There are many different topics that are tackled in this short book, sexual abuse, bullying, sexual identity and disfigurement just to mention some of them. If you read between the lines there are plenty of things to discuss, for instance the relationship between Geryon and Herakles as well as their relationship with Ancash a mutual friend.
”The effort it took to pull himself
away from Herakles’ eyes
could have been measured on the scale devised by Richter.”
As I already said poetry leaves a lot of room for subjective interpretation but what I could gather from the story and how I interpret it is that Geryon is a very lonely person. His mother is affectionate but doesn’t know how to support her son. She’s not only unaware of the bullying at school but also doesn’t notice the ongoing sexual abuse by Geryon’s own brother. Geryon’s world is pretty dark and the atmosphere of the book makes sure to convey this feeling every step of the way. When Geryon meets Herakles and falls in love with him he begins to question his sexuality and this starts his process of finding himself. The relationship between Geryon and Herakles feels kind of toxic because even though their feelings seem to be mutual at first Herakles leaves him with a broken heart and this ultimately causes Geryon to fall into a depression.
”He saw the doorway
the house the night the world and
on the other side of the world somewhere Herakles laughing drinking getting into a car and Geryon's
whole body formed one arch of a cry - upcast to that custom, the human custom of wrong love."
Years later they meet in Peru and Geryon’s conflicting feelings begin to overwhelm him once again. Geryon is aware of all the prying eyes and tries to keep his distance, but Herakles won’t let him be, taking the role of a predator that wants to seduce him. Ultimately Geryon is too weak to push him away. This was a really interesting shift in their dynamic because in the original myth Herakles is the hero that kills Geryon. Carson reverses their roles and makes “the monster” the victim which forces her readers to think outside of the box. I personally think it’s also a nod to the original Greek myth, because in fact Geryon was Herakles’s victim in the tale as well. Geryon was only killed by Herakles because it was his tenth task to steal Geryon’s herd of red bulls and after Herakles slayed Orthos and Eurytion Geryon challenged him to a duel which ended with his death.
”Aren’t you cold?” said Geryon to Ancash who had no coat on. No, said Ancash.
Then he looked sideways at Geryon.
Well actually yes. He smiled. Geryon would have liked to wrap his coat around
this feather man. They walked on.”
As for the role of Ancash, their mutual friend in Peru? I’m still not all too sure what to make of his character, but I think Carson created him to point out Herakles’ abuse. Ancash doesn’t approve of Herakles’ advances and Geryon’s feelings for him, but I also got the feeling that he was jealous?! His character certainly acted as some sort of catalyst and pushed the story along. Honestly, if any of you read “Autobiography of Red” I’d love to hear your thoughts on Ancash. I still don’t know how to place him. XD
All told, to read “Autobiography of Red” was a very weird, yet at the same time intriguing experience. I still don’t know what to make of the ending but I guess Carson left it that way on purpose. It’s the reader’s choice how to interpret it and I think that’s good the way it is. ;-)
_____________________________
This must have been one of the weidest, yet also one of the most interesting books I've ever read.
There is so much left to interpretation and my mind just can't wrap around it all. I dunno if I'll be able to write a proper review about this but I'll try?
_____________________________
V, reading poetry?
Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I’m actually reading a poetry novel and this one came highly recommended by one of my fellow BookTubers and his friend who’s an actual literature professor!
They both said I should read this so here I am. ;-)
Very curious about this one because the blurb sounds pretty promising.
Find me on:
My Blog
July 6, 2021
TL;DR: PUIKI KNYGA BET VIS TIEK PAPRIEKABIAVAU PRIE TURINIO
Įspūdinga ir keista knyga, labai gera, bet - kaip ir Raros leistas Jėzaus sūnus - matyt, ne mano knyga. Gal reikėjo skaityt angliškai? Vertimas atrodo labai kietas, bet skaitant kita kalba vis tiek truputį prisideda egzotikos, kitoniškumo. Tas kitoniškumas gal būtų išbalansavęs įspūdį, nes dabar vietomis atrodė, kad knyga nori būti mano draugelė, o aš to jau nenorėjau.
Tai eiliuotas romanas; jis nėra rimuotas ir nėra griežto metro (bent lietuviškai), bet parašytas atskirais fragmentais, sekant antikiniu poetu Stesichoru, rašiusiu apie graikų mitų veikėją Gerijoną. Jis, raudona sparnuota pabaisa, per vieną iš 12 Heraklio žygdarbių saugojo galvijus, kuriuos tas turėjo parsivaryt, tai užmušė ir Gerijono šunį, ir patį Gerijoną, įvykdė užduotį. Carson iš Stesichoro skolinasi labai gražią homerišką raišką:
- o iš mitologijos skolinasi pabaisą, ją perkelia į šiuos laikus ir rodo kaip jauną, iš disfunkcinės šeimos kilusį ir nuolat į per didelį paltą įsisupusį paauglį gėjų. Paltas per didelis, nes slepia jo sparnus: Gerijonas, taip duodama suprasti pabaigoje, priklauso tiems nedaugeliui žmonių, kurie pabuvojo ugnikalnio viduje (knygos viršelis!!!), bet nesudegė, iš jo išskrido ir dabar yra nemirtingi. Bet jis to nežino, tik gėdinasi sparnų. Heraklis čia - ne jo žudikas, o toks kietas vyresnis pažįstamas-meilužis, paskui jį palikęs ir sudaužęs jam širdį. Taigi čia nelabai slaptai metaforinė savęs atradimo, savęs priėmimo kelionė: pabaisiškumas - tai, kaip save matai, o tas, kuris tave nužudo, - tai tas, kuris palieka.
Skaitydama vis galvojau, ką ši knyga man primena. Šiaip man sunkiai einasi su mitų sušiuolaikinimais - atsimenu, ir su Christos Wolf labai vargau, o Madeline Miller net į rankas dar nepaėmiau. Antra vertus, The Kindly Ones man iki šiol atrodo vienas įspūdingiausių kada nors parašytų tekstų. Galiausiai supratau: Carson man labai primena Dereką Jarmaną, jo "Sebastianą" arba "Edvardą II" - tie patys anachronizmai, senovinė kalba, bet šiuolaikiniai elementai, o labiausiai iš šiuolaikybės ateina žiaurumo ir negailestingumo vaizdiniai. Ir "Edvarde" klasikinė tragedija tampa sykiu ir priespaudos, diskriminacijos, lyčių stereotipų ir kruvinos homofobijos metafora. Bet kaip Carson renkasi raudoną, o Jarmano didysis kūrinys yra "Mėlyna", taip ir jų perkeliami seni tekstai suskamba kažkaip visai priešingai. Pas Jarmaną nokautuoja vizualumas, teatrališkumas ir sykiu visiškai archajinė kalba ("Sebastiane" išvis kalba lotyniškai). Ir šiuolaikybės įsiterpimai filme - labiau pažeidimai, priminimai mums, kad visus mitus galime skaityt ir kaip gyvenimo siužetus, nebūtinai literatūros kūrinius.
Apie tai galvojant, Carson tekste mane labiausiai trikdė, kad mitologiniai personažai būtinai turi šnekėti šiuolaikiškai, žargonu, būti visiškai persikėlę ir paklusti šiandienos taisyklėms. Be to, Carson Gerijonui viskas baigiasi gerai, savęs priėmimas įvyksta! Tai reik suprast, kad mes jau apvertėm mitologiją, pasimokėm? Nu kad neee.
Gal net labiau nei pati Gerijono "autobiografija" man patiko tie Carson "atkurti" (=sukurti) Stesichoro fragmentai iš poemos "Gerionada" knygos pradžioje. Alexandros Bondarev išversti skamba taip, labai gražu:
Nu bet ir pati autobiografija parašyta tiesiog nuostabiai, skaitai ir tiesiog gera (jei nepriekabiauji prie turinio). Čia Gerijonas bare užkalbino kažkokį atvažiavusį dalyvaut filosofų konferencijoje:
Kaip ir viskas Raros, knyga be galo gražiai išleista. Mažas šriftas, kad eilutė tilptų į eilutę (va net Goodreadse netelpa, o knygoje telpa), gražiai išfragmentuotas tekstas, fainas vertimas. Bandysiu toliau ją skaityti - labai įdomi ir gera autorė, nesvarbu, priekabiautum ar ne.
Įspūdinga ir keista knyga, labai gera, bet - kaip ir Raros leistas Jėzaus sūnus - matyt, ne mano knyga. Gal reikėjo skaityt angliškai? Vertimas atrodo labai kietas, bet skaitant kita kalba vis tiek truputį prisideda egzotikos, kitoniškumo. Tas kitoniškumas gal būtų išbalansavęs įspūdį, nes dabar vietomis atrodė, kad knyga nori būti mano draugelė, o aš to jau nenorėjau.
Tai eiliuotas romanas; jis nėra rimuotas ir nėra griežto metro (bent lietuviškai), bet parašytas atskirais fragmentais, sekant antikiniu poetu Stesichoru, rašiusiu apie graikų mitų veikėją Gerijoną. Jis, raudona sparnuota pabaisa, per vieną iš 12 Heraklio žygdarbių saugojo galvijus, kuriuos tas turėjo parsivaryt, tai užmušė ir Gerijono šunį, ir patį Gerijoną, įvykdė užduotį. Carson iš Stesichoro skolinasi labai gražią homerišką raišką:
Tarp Pagrindinių durų ir Darželio driekėsi koridorius. Gerijonui jis rodės
lyg šimtas tūkstančių mylių
griaudžiančių tunelių ir vidinio neono dangaus, milžinų plačiai atšauto.
(p. 34)
- o iš mitologijos skolinasi pabaisą, ją perkelia į šiuos laikus ir rodo kaip jauną, iš disfunkcinės šeimos kilusį ir nuolat į per didelį paltą įsisupusį paauglį gėjų. Paltas per didelis, nes slepia jo sparnus: Gerijonas, taip duodama suprasti pabaigoje, priklauso tiems nedaugeliui žmonių, kurie pabuvojo ugnikalnio viduje (knygos viršelis!!!), bet nesudegė, iš jo išskrido ir dabar yra nemirtingi. Bet jis to nežino, tik gėdinasi sparnų. Heraklis čia - ne jo žudikas, o toks kietas vyresnis pažįstamas-meilužis, paskui jį palikęs ir sudaužęs jam širdį. Taigi čia nelabai slaptai metaforinė savęs atradimo, savęs priėmimo kelionė: pabaisiškumas - tai, kaip save matai, o tas, kuris tave nužudo, - tai tas, kuris palieka.
Skaitydama vis galvojau, ką ši knyga man primena. Šiaip man sunkiai einasi su mitų sušiuolaikinimais - atsimenu, ir su Christos Wolf labai vargau, o Madeline Miller net į rankas dar nepaėmiau. Antra vertus, The Kindly Ones man iki šiol atrodo vienas įspūdingiausių kada nors parašytų tekstų. Galiausiai supratau: Carson man labai primena Dereką Jarmaną, jo "Sebastianą" arba "Edvardą II" - tie patys anachronizmai, senovinė kalba, bet šiuolaikiniai elementai, o labiausiai iš šiuolaikybės ateina žiaurumo ir negailestingumo vaizdiniai. Ir "Edvarde" klasikinė tragedija tampa sykiu ir priespaudos, diskriminacijos, lyčių stereotipų ir kruvinos homofobijos metafora. Bet kaip Carson renkasi raudoną, o Jarmano didysis kūrinys yra "Mėlyna", taip ir jų perkeliami seni tekstai suskamba kažkaip visai priešingai. Pas Jarmaną nokautuoja vizualumas, teatrališkumas ir sykiu visiškai archajinė kalba ("Sebastiane" išvis kalba lotyniškai). Ir šiuolaikybės įsiterpimai filme - labiau pažeidimai, priminimai mums, kad visus mitus galime skaityt ir kaip gyvenimo siužetus, nebūtinai literatūros kūrinius.
Apie tai galvojant, Carson tekste mane labiausiai trikdė, kad mitologiniai personažai būtinai turi šnekėti šiuolaikiškai, žargonu, būti visiškai persikėlę ir paklusti šiandienos taisyklėms. Be to, Carson Gerijonui viskas baigiasi gerai, savęs priėmimas įvyksta! Tai reik suprast, kad mes jau apvertėm mitologiją, pasimokėm? Nu kad neee.
Gal net labiau nei pati Gerijono "autobiografija" man patiko tie Carson "atkurti" (=sukurti) Stesichoro fragmentai iš poemos "Gerionada" knygos pradžioje. Alexandros Bondarev išversti skamba taip, labai gražu:
XII. SPARNAI
Nužengia nuo subraižyto kovo dangaus ir panyra
Į aklą atlantinį rytą Vienas mažas
Raudonas šunytis šokuojantis pakrante daugel mylių žemiau
It išlaisvintas šešėlis.
(p. 20)
XV. VISA KAS ŽINOMA APIE GERIJONĄ
Jis mėgo žaibus Gyveno saloj Jo motina buvo
Nimfa upėj kuri tekėjo jūron Jo tėvas buvo auksinis
Pjūvio įrankis Senosios scholijos byloja kad anot Stesichoro
Gerijonas turėjo šešias rankas šešias kojas ir sparnus Jis buvo raudonas ir
Jo keistos raudonos karvės žadino pavydą Heraklis atėjo ir
Nužudė jį dėl jo karvių
Ir šunį taip pat
XVI. GERIJONO GALAS
Raudonas pasaulis Ir atitinkami raudoni vėjai
Gyvavo toliau Gerijonas ne
(p. 21)
Nu bet ir pati autobiografija parašyta tiesiog nuostabiai, skaitai ir tiesiog gera (jei nepriekabiauji prie turinio). Čia Gerijonas bare užkalbino kažkokį atvažiavusį dalyvaut filosofų konferencijoje:
...Noriu patyrinėti abejonės
erotiką. Kodėl? - paklausė Gerijonas.
Geltonbarzdis atsistūmė kėdę, - Kaip išankstinę sąlygą, - ir mostelėjo
padavėjams kitapus salės, -
deramoms tiesos paieškoms. Su sąlyga, kad gali išsižadėt, - jis atsistojo, - tos
gana fundamentalios žmogiškosios savybės, -
jis pakėlė abi rankas tarsi įspėdamas laivą jūroj, - troškimo žinoti. Jis atsisėdo.
(p. 93)
Kaip ir viskas Raros, knyga be galo gražiai išleista. Mažas šriftas, kad eilutė tilptų į eilutę (va net Goodreadse netelpa, o knygoje telpa), gražiai išfragmentuotas tekstas, fainas vertimas. Bandysiu toliau ją skaityti - labai įdomi ir gera autorė, nesvarbu, priekabiautum ar ne.
April 27, 2016
It was taking him a very long whileEvery so often my education comes in handy when I am confronted by a piece that does not seize me by the heart and wring it till I weep like it has apparently done for most everyone else. One could say peer pressure, or one could admit to capitalism and how a measure of discipline is needed in analyzing any work that is mandated, regardless of personal adoration. Besides, this is one of those works that I really need to go back and reread The Iliad and The Odyssey and co. for, albeit I dislike necessitating the swallowing of the same old canon for a work that should stand on its own, albeit there's many a confabulation of myth and written and blasphemy tickling my brain that I would so like to pin down to the count, albeit what the hell am I doing in the major of English if I want to forgo more reading for reading's sake, so. Sometimes the internal to-and-fro works like these provoke is worth the cost of purely academic parsing alone.
to set up the camera. Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his hands
each time he tried to move them.
What have you written that could strike you blind? Not lie or truth but sacrilege, much like that fine line between fanfiction and kindred souls of Pulitzer Prize winners that so troubled a professor when I responded to his offer of The Hours with lack of interest. I'd believe there was a difference in type rather than quality were the halls not so full of Shakespeare and Milton and those who knew what one should steal in order to enjoy the better legacy of Prometheus. Go big, go ancient, go poetic and/or historical, go foundering on the threat of military might or the wracking of the very own soul, the mind of a male of red-rued means that bypasses death for the photo volcano and finds a refuge, like so many of us, in art. Perhaps not from love, or wings, or child on child sexual assault, but from real to representation nonetheless. There's reasons why Plato banished the stuff.
I didn't like this as much as The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos. Course, I was reading poetry a lot more regularly back then, so I may be thinking myself set on track while in reality dangling preciously off the back of the horse. Still, I can appreciate the feeling of the need to pay tribute in whys and wherefores that take wordselves far more seriously than the world deems fit to grant. Imagine all those objects rising up against their subjects and tearing eyes from their sockets. What a riot.
People, thought Geryon,
for whom life
is a marvelous adventure. He moved off into the tragicomedy of the crowd.
July 22, 2021
i finished this around midnight and held off on rating or reviewing it until now because i couldn't decide how i felt about the experience. i've been hovering between 3 and 4 stars, even after reading a few autobiography of red examinations/reviews in search of further clarity.
ultimately i'm settling on four stars because, upon finishing, i'd already made up my mind about keeping my physical copy (the implication being that i knew i was going to want to revisit the story, or language, or format someday soon). which means my brain recognizes that there's something worth reading and rereading here.
the story didn't compel me like i had hoped—no gut-churning anguish for me, unfortunately—but anne carson is so uniquely herself, in both style, structure, and execution, that i couldn't bear the thought of parting with my copy. where else would i find a book quite like this one? towards the end, my mind kept drifting because i was so overcome with the desire to write, which, for me, is its own kind of creative success.
so, four stars...
ultimately i'm settling on four stars because, upon finishing, i'd already made up my mind about keeping my physical copy (the implication being that i knew i was going to want to revisit the story, or language, or format someday soon). which means my brain recognizes that there's something worth reading and rereading here.
the story didn't compel me like i had hoped—no gut-churning anguish for me, unfortunately—but anne carson is so uniquely herself, in both style, structure, and execution, that i couldn't bear the thought of parting with my copy. where else would i find a book quite like this one? towards the end, my mind kept drifting because i was so overcome with the desire to write, which, for me, is its own kind of creative success.
so, four stars...
It was the hour when snow goes blue / and streetlights come on and a hare may / pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book.
November 5, 2008
if you no like this book, i no like you
September 16, 2024
Ovakva dela opovrgavaju da živimo u vremenu književnosti koja ne može iznenaditi. I književnosti koja nije velika. Problem je, sad i uvek, u selekciji: na globalnoj književnoj livadi toliko je bilja da je izazov napraviti buket. Neko je krtica, nekoga cveće ne zanima, pa samo projuri, a neko prati samo određenu vrstu cveća, ali livada je blistavi ekosistem, uspostavljen stalnim menjanjem.
„Autobiografija Crvenogˮ je podsetnik te radosti susreta sa uzbudljivom, izazovnom literaturom, koja ne odustaje od mita, ali mu daje čudesno novo štimovanje. I kao što je to slučaj sa svim sličnim delima, prvi susret je samo upoznavanje, poziv da se zaroni, da se zastane, a posebno su mi bliske one knjige koje su pune i u delovima i u celini. I da, mnogi pisci imaju osećaj za jezik i veštinu oblikovanja forme, što je izuzetno važno, ali oni zaista najređi mogu da pogode nešto na tako svež način da deluje da su oni prvi dospeli tamo gde su mnogi bili. Vrhunska književnost krije se u sposobnosti uosećavanja i kapacitetu za pronalazak mere, a te sfere se ovde izuzetno uzajamno prožimaju.
Ali da ne dužim, makar ne ovde, nema za tim potrebe, naročito jer je ovo sve mnogo bolje i ubedljivije o delu rekao Brodolomi, a pošto ne znam da okačim link, možete tekst potražiti ovde, na Gudridsu. Od Karson sam pročitao i „Kratka slovaˮ u prevodu Alena Bešića. Pokušao sam da taj tekst prizovem u sećanju, ali je neobično izlapeo. Za utehu, prošlo je pet godina. Uz blistavu jezgrovitost, ostali su tu i tračci specifičnog humora i zaista neobične samozatajne otvorenosti. Književni svet En Karson crpi snagu od same književnosti i to je retko dirljivo. Livada se raduje, buja.
„Autobiografija Crvenogˮ je podsetnik te radosti susreta sa uzbudljivom, izazovnom literaturom, koja ne odustaje od mita, ali mu daje čudesno novo štimovanje. I kao što je to slučaj sa svim sličnim delima, prvi susret je samo upoznavanje, poziv da se zaroni, da se zastane, a posebno su mi bliske one knjige koje su pune i u delovima i u celini. I da, mnogi pisci imaju osećaj za jezik i veštinu oblikovanja forme, što je izuzetno važno, ali oni zaista najređi mogu da pogode nešto na tako svež način da deluje da su oni prvi dospeli tamo gde su mnogi bili. Vrhunska književnost krije se u sposobnosti uosećavanja i kapacitetu za pronalazak mere, a te sfere se ovde izuzetno uzajamno prožimaju.
Ali da ne dužim, makar ne ovde, nema za tim potrebe, naročito jer je ovo sve mnogo bolje i ubedljivije o delu rekao Brodolomi, a pošto ne znam da okačim link, možete tekst potražiti ovde, na Gudridsu. Od Karson sam pročitao i „Kratka slovaˮ u prevodu Alena Bešića. Pokušao sam da taj tekst prizovem u sećanju, ali je neobično izlapeo. Za utehu, prošlo je pet godina. Uz blistavu jezgrovitost, ostali su tu i tračci specifičnog humora i zaista neobične samozatajne otvorenosti. Književni svet En Karson crpi snagu od same književnosti i to je retko dirljivo. Livada se raduje, buja.
July 13, 2007
This novel was written for me, it feels. It has the perfect blend of funny and sad, raw and elegant, intellectual and sensual. It blew my mind when I read it. And it's the one of only two books I've re-read several times (Great Expectations being the other.)
There are some clever metafictional framing sections which come at the material from historical and literary angles, but the central section, the heart of the book, is the story, the novel in verse.
"Verse" in Anne Carson isn't strident metrical regularity or forced rhyme, but merely prose that fine tuned and broken into lines. It's stunningly beautiful. Her highly original way with words is bracing.
The story is a retelling of the myth of Hercules and Geryon, the red monster who he kills in one of his labours, as a modern gay romance. Geryon is still a red monster but he's also a sensitive young man who falls in love with impulsive, heroic Hercules, a kind of trailor trash revolutionary.
The book has the melancholy, romantic voluptuousness of Thomas Mann or Carson McCullers pressed through the distilling crackle of T.S. Eliot's literate virtuosity. It manages to be Apollonian and Dionysian. Playful, powerful. Hard, soft. Hopeless, hopeful. There isn't a more successful fusion of opposites in literature.
There are some clever metafictional framing sections which come at the material from historical and literary angles, but the central section, the heart of the book, is the story, the novel in verse.
"Verse" in Anne Carson isn't strident metrical regularity or forced rhyme, but merely prose that fine tuned and broken into lines. It's stunningly beautiful. Her highly original way with words is bracing.
The story is a retelling of the myth of Hercules and Geryon, the red monster who he kills in one of his labours, as a modern gay romance. Geryon is still a red monster but he's also a sensitive young man who falls in love with impulsive, heroic Hercules, a kind of trailor trash revolutionary.
The book has the melancholy, romantic voluptuousness of Thomas Mann or Carson McCullers pressed through the distilling crackle of T.S. Eliot's literate virtuosity. It manages to be Apollonian and Dionysian. Playful, powerful. Hard, soft. Hopeless, hopeful. There isn't a more successful fusion of opposites in literature.
March 9, 2022
Disclaimer: I use footnotes in this review, and I'm sorry. I definitely wasn't trying to be clever or academic, but I found the many points of connection difficult to discuss without going on a hundred different tangents. So my apologies beforehand, but I couldn't find another way.
Not long ago I read an interview with Marcel Duchamp and, as someone who didn't know much about him, what struck me most was how good he was at titling his art. He called one "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even", and the interviewer asked him why he added the word "Even" at the end:
I'm interested in adverbs because in writing school they teach you NOT to use them. No "-ly" words; if you have to modify a verb, then choose a BETTER verb in the first place. Instead of "he walked purposefully", use "he beelined".
But it's time to throw away those rules. Because some verbs (and entire sentences) do gain a je-ne-sais-quois from being modified. And because adverbs don't always end in "-ly". "Even" is an adverb. And so is "again", "nevertheless", "just", "still", "not", "each" and a hundred others. They're just not the first adverbs one tends to think of because often they aren't modifying in a simple direct way. "Even" changes a verb in a subtle but significant way, having to do with expectations, the push and pull that a verb carries. I suddenly realized what Duchamp was doing with adverbs: he was trying to complicate meaning. By adding something that he says has "no meaning," somehow the phrase gains meaning. (1)
Instead of adverbs, Anne Carson talks about a different type of modifier: adjectives. In what is essentially a prologue to Autobiography of Red, Carson waxes poetic about them:
WHY, you might be asking yourself, why is this guy talking about adverbs and adjectives and blindness when the novel is just a simple love story about a red winged monster who falls in love with his killer (both literal in the myth and metaphorical in Carson's version)?
Good question. I, too, found myself asking "Why did Anne Carson frame this simple love story with all this front-matter and appendices and Dickinson poems and fake interviews with Stesichoros?" This question occupied me for a while because I've read this book before, more than a decade ago. I never liked it as much as Carson's other work, because I first fell in love with Carson for her more essayistic/poetic work; there was more a sense of play and experimentation. In this book, I felt like she was doing the more boring work of building a narrative. Of keeping a novelist's grueling hours. While it was a good story, I was looking for more. But this time, while re-reading it, I realized that she was doing something more interesting than that.
I realized Anne Carson was so fascinated with Stesichoros's adjectives because, like Duchamp's "Even" and other "meaningless" adverbs, adjectives complicate meaning. In the same way, Anne Carson wanted to complicate this simple love story by creating this framing device around it (4). I thought maybe one way of reading this book was to read it through the lens of "complication" and how the book uses everything at its disposal to this goal. The complication was the focus for me, rather than what it was complicating. The "Even" was more interesting to me than the bride or the bachelors.
Carson's complication comes in many flavors, but adjectives (and modifiers) are only a metaphor for what she does/how she does it, for she works beyond simple grammar. One example is that she plays with time.
Throughout the book, Carson asks repeatedly the question "What is time made of?" Carson is a storyteller, and all stories are told through time. In most stories, time travels in a straight line, but Carson loves to complicate time by repeatedly using anachronisms.
In her translation of the Geryoneis, an ancient poem, she includes items like hot plates and red taxis. The modern day has injected itself into the ancient so that all time appears flat. Likewise, Stesichoros's ancient poem exists in a timeless mythical space; Carson's modern day Geryon somehow magically knows about it, even before he's lived it. As a child, he writes in his Autobiography:
All stories exist within time, even Geryon's documentation of his own story in his Autobiography. When he takes up photography, he is capturing moments of time and isolating them. A photograph is both a single moment in time as well as an eternity, as it exists forever in the same state. Maybe Geryon's favorite weapon is a cage because it captures someone the way a camera captures a moment?
Geryon's interest in photography ties together two of Carson's main themes: time and vision.
FOOTNOTES
1: "Even" is one of those hard-to-define words. Carson ruminates on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of a similar adjective/adverb, "each":
2: Duchamp talks about how he wasn't interested in art that caters to the "retinal". Perhaps this is kind of a striving towards blindness that is almost Stesichoros-like. To see beyond what is on the surface.
3: Ironically, Homer was also a blind man. Maybe there's something to be said for the loss of physical vision to gain a vision of the truth, but now I'm getting into inspirational poster territory.
4: It's fitting that the love story was itself complicated, in the way that young people might describe a relationship as "it's complicated". As Dionne Brand put it so well: "To desire may also be to complicate."
5: For one thing, colors play a major role here. Red is obviously an important color. The word Red itself is an adjective, but is used here as a noun. How does an adjective, here a modifier of a non-existent noun, write its own autobiography? And if Carson is writing this biography, how is it "auto"? It's complicated, because Carson is writing about Geryon who is the one actually 'writing' it except he's not writing most of the time, he's making sculptures and taking photographs. Other colors crop up. Yellowbeard. Geryon has synesthesia. Blue is almost always associated with distance, which reminded me of that Rebecca Solnit book. With colors, it seems that each color was tied in with a certain association, mimicking the synesthesia that Geryon experienced, but also so that Carson became the Homer of color, latching adjectives onto their associated emotions and not letting go.
6: This in turn echoes the Emily Dickinson poem that Carson quotes at the beginning, where death/immortality is "The only secret people keep," i.e. they can't come back to tell of it.
Not long ago I read an interview with Marcel Duchamp and, as someone who didn't know much about him, what struck me most was how good he was at titling his art. He called one "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even", and the interviewer asked him why he added the word "Even" at the end:
Words interested me; and the bringing together of words to which I added a comma and “even,” an adverb which makes no sense, since it relates to nothing in the picture or title. Thus it was an adverb in the most beautiful demonstration of adverbness. It has no meaning.I wouldn't go as far as to say it has no meaning, but that its meaning is extremely ambiguous and complicated. Perhaps it strives to have no referent? An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, but what is "Even" even modifying in this case? How does it change this stripping act? What difference does "Even" make, as Anne Carson might ask. Nevertheless, you read it differently.
I'm interested in adverbs because in writing school they teach you NOT to use them. No "-ly" words; if you have to modify a verb, then choose a BETTER verb in the first place. Instead of "he walked purposefully", use "he beelined".
But it's time to throw away those rules. Because some verbs (and entire sentences) do gain a je-ne-sais-quois from being modified. And because adverbs don't always end in "-ly". "Even" is an adverb. And so is "again", "nevertheless", "just", "still", "not", "each" and a hundred others. They're just not the first adverbs one tends to think of because often they aren't modifying in a simple direct way. "Even" changes a verb in a subtle but significant way, having to do with expectations, the push and pull that a verb carries. I suddenly realized what Duchamp was doing with adverbs: he was trying to complicate meaning. By adding something that he says has "no meaning," somehow the phrase gains meaning. (1)
Instead of adverbs, Anne Carson talks about a different type of modifier: adjectives. In what is essentially a prologue to Autobiography of Red, Carson waxes poetic about them:
Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are latches of being.She goes on to tell how the major difference of a poet like Stesichoros, on whose Geryoneis Carson based her novel, is that he was the first one to unlatch the adjectives from their nouns. Before him, poets like Homer would always describe a noun with the same adjectives so that they became burnt onto the retinal(2) screen:
When Homer mentions blood, blood is black. When women appear, women are neat-ankled or glancing. Poseidon always has the blue eyebrows of Poseidon. God's laughter is unquenchable. Human knees are quick.Then Stesichoros came along and shattered this Homeric consistency, and thus shattered a way of seeing the world. He was then blinded by Helen, supposedly for slandering her; but perhaps it was really to punish him for being able to see a new, unlatched truth. In order for Stesichoros to see again, in the literal sense, he had to retract (unsee) his figurative vision. (3)
WHY, you might be asking yourself, why is this guy talking about adverbs and adjectives and blindness when the novel is just a simple love story about a red winged monster who falls in love with his killer (both literal in the myth and metaphorical in Carson's version)?
Good question. I, too, found myself asking "Why did Anne Carson frame this simple love story with all this front-matter and appendices and Dickinson poems and fake interviews with Stesichoros?" This question occupied me for a while because I've read this book before, more than a decade ago. I never liked it as much as Carson's other work, because I first fell in love with Carson for her more essayistic/poetic work; there was more a sense of play and experimentation. In this book, I felt like she was doing the more boring work of building a narrative. Of keeping a novelist's grueling hours. While it was a good story, I was looking for more. But this time, while re-reading it, I realized that she was doing something more interesting than that.
I realized Anne Carson was so fascinated with Stesichoros's adjectives because, like Duchamp's "Even" and other "meaningless" adverbs, adjectives complicate meaning. In the same way, Anne Carson wanted to complicate this simple love story by creating this framing device around it (4). I thought maybe one way of reading this book was to read it through the lens of "complication" and how the book uses everything at its disposal to this goal. The complication was the focus for me, rather than what it was complicating. The "Even" was more interesting to me than the bride or the bachelors.
Carson's complication comes in many flavors, but adjectives (and modifiers) are only a metaphor for what she does/how she does it, for she works beyond simple grammar. One example is that she plays with time.
Throughout the book, Carson asks repeatedly the question "What is time made of?" Carson is a storyteller, and all stories are told through time. In most stories, time travels in a straight line, but Carson loves to complicate time by repeatedly using anachronisms.
In her translation of the Geryoneis, an ancient poem, she includes items like hot plates and red taxis. The modern day has injected itself into the ancient so that all time appears flat. Likewise, Stesichoros's ancient poem exists in a timeless mythical space; Carson's modern day Geryon somehow magically knows about it, even before he's lived it. As a child, he writes in his Autobiography:
Total Facts Known About Geryon.How did Carson's Geryon know about the mythical Geryon, and how did he feel about this vision of his past/future death? Did he see it as his fate to repeat history, or to live out the myth that preceded him? It calls to mind the "mythic time" I encountered while reading Joseph and His Brothers, and how the timelessness of a myth is like a wheel that keeps turning out new iterations.
Geryon was a monster everything about him was red. Geryon lived
on an island in the Atlantic called the Red Place. Geryon’s mother
was a river that runs to the sea the Red Joy River Geryon’s father
was gold. Some say Geryon had six hands six feet some say wings.
Geryon was red so were his strange red cattle. Herakles came one
day killed Geryon got the cattle.
All stories exist within time, even Geryon's documentation of his own story in his Autobiography. When he takes up photography, he is capturing moments of time and isolating them. A photograph is both a single moment in time as well as an eternity, as it exists forever in the same state. Maybe Geryon's favorite weapon is a cage because it captures someone the way a camera captures a moment?
Geryon's interest in photography ties together two of Carson's main themes: time and vision.
'Red Patience.' A photograph that has compressedVision plays into Carson's novel, both in its framing device (Stesichoros's blinding) as well as in Geryon's inner story(5). In it, Ancash tells Geryon that in ancient times they threw people into a volcano, not as human sacrifices, but because:
on its motionless surface
fifteen different moments of time, nine hundred seconds of bombs moving up
and ash moving down
and pines in the kill process.
...
What if you took a fifteen-minute exposure of a man in jail, let’s say the lava
has just reached his window?
They were looking for peopleGeryon's whole autobiography (as sculpture, writing, and photography) is itself a form of eyewitness. But he takes it further; though he "has not flown for years", he decides to become an eyewitness just like the ancients. The idea of documenting the red interior of the volcano and coming back as a witness is itself some kind of mythic ass shit that recalls Orpheus's trip to Hades and back (except for Orpheus, the act of looking was fatal)(6). Vision, witness, documentation and its ever deadly power swirls around in a complicated mess and I'm loving it.
from the inside. Wise ones.
Holy men I guess you would say. The word in Quechua is Yazcol Yazcamac it means
the Ones Who Went and Saw and Came Back—
I think the anthropologists say eyewitnesses.
...
How do they come back?
Wings.
FOOTNOTES
1: "Even" is one of those hard-to-define words. Carson ruminates on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of a similar adjective/adverb, "each":
... Geryon had always had this trouble: a word like eachIt's telling that Geryon's mother defines the word by giving an example, not a definition. The word has no meaning outside of its context. A dictionary definition is useless in this case, where words in the wild can only be defined by how they interact and complicate each other's meanings. How do we define ourselves except through the context of others? Gay/straight/hero/monster? In this story, Carson makes Geryon (technically the monster) into the hero and Herakles into the monster.
when he stared at it, would disassemble itself into separate letters and go.
A space for its meaning remained there but blank.
The letters themselves could be found hung on branches or furniture in the area.
What does each mean?
Geryon had asked his mother. She never lied to him. Once she said the meaning it would stay.
She answered, Each means like you and your brother each have your own room.
2: Duchamp talks about how he wasn't interested in art that caters to the "retinal". Perhaps this is kind of a striving towards blindness that is almost Stesichoros-like. To see beyond what is on the surface.
CABANNE: Where does your antiretinal attitude come from?
DUCHAMP: From too great an importance given to the retinal. Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral.
3: Ironically, Homer was also a blind man. Maybe there's something to be said for the loss of physical vision to gain a vision of the truth, but now I'm getting into inspirational poster territory.
4: It's fitting that the love story was itself complicated, in the way that young people might describe a relationship as "it's complicated". As Dionne Brand put it so well: "To desire may also be to complicate."
5: For one thing, colors play a major role here. Red is obviously an important color. The word Red itself is an adjective, but is used here as a noun. How does an adjective, here a modifier of a non-existent noun, write its own autobiography? And if Carson is writing this biography, how is it "auto"? It's complicated, because Carson is writing about Geryon who is the one actually 'writing' it except he's not writing most of the time, he's making sculptures and taking photographs. Other colors crop up. Yellowbeard. Geryon has synesthesia. Blue is almost always associated with distance, which reminded me of that Rebecca Solnit book. With colors, it seems that each color was tied in with a certain association, mimicking the synesthesia that Geryon experienced, but also so that Carson became the Homer of color, latching adjectives onto their associated emotions and not letting go.
6: This in turn echoes the Emily Dickinson poem that Carson quotes at the beginning, where death/immortality is "The only secret people keep," i.e. they can't come back to tell of it.
March 8, 2015
Sometimes I read a work that is so complete that I don't want to write a review. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson is that kind of book.
A retelling of the story of Geryon, a red-winged monster who has a short but painful affair with Heracles that reverberates through his life.
What struck me was Geryon's unending effort to make art out of his life-first through writing, even as a child before he could actually write, and then as a photographer. Geryon's life is painful but he constantly searches to give it meaning, to find meaning in the world around him.
The poetry is powerful and the story disturbing. I loved this text but I think I would have to read it several more times before I could begin to write a real review.
It's a volume well worth re-reading.
A retelling of the story of Geryon, a red-winged monster who has a short but painful affair with Heracles that reverberates through his life.
What struck me was Geryon's unending effort to make art out of his life-first through writing, even as a child before he could actually write, and then as a photographer. Geryon's life is painful but he constantly searches to give it meaning, to find meaning in the world around him.
The poetry is powerful and the story disturbing. I loved this text but I think I would have to read it several more times before I could begin to write a real review.
It's a volume well worth re-reading.
January 10, 2024
roman empire kind of book
January 25, 2014
This will only make some, albeit sarcastic, sense, if you have actually read the book:
CLEARING UP
THE QUESTION OF
WHETHER The Autobiography of Red
IS WORTH THE PAPER IT
IS PRINTED ON
1. Either THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED is a good story/poem or it is not.
2. If the book/poem was good, either the goodness of it will enlighten the mind of its reader or it will not.
3. If it is not a book/poem which enlightens the mind of its reader, then there is a reason this is so.
4. If the reason is that the "protagonist"-monster never took his mistakes, and the evils which were acted upon him, which caused him to walk through life unengaged and basically a useless piece of red animated flesh with wings [ think of the STRANGER's protagonist, Meursault...but less of a true monster, since he is not a killer] by finding absolute truth, which could help him triumph over his trials, through application, or he did not.
5. If the protagonist never learned to triumph over all which beset him by grasping some absolute eternal truth, his personal anguish was all for nothing, and his mortality was a waste of time.
6. If his mortality was a waste of time, then reading about it is a waste of the reader's time.
7. If reading about the protagonist's useless life journey was a waste of the reader's time, then this book/poem is not a good read.
8. If this book/poem is not a good read, then it should get one-star.
9. If this book has only been rated with one star...it should be burned...so at least the pulpy-pages can be used to do SOMETHING positive, such as provide a bit of warmth to the person who purchased them.
10. If it should be burned, the reader who rated it with one star should light the match...
The BEST part of the book, NOT the story/poem written by Anne Carson, was the bits and pieces of the writing from which she took inspiration written centuries ago by STESICHOROS.
The ACTUAL fragments , really several paragraphs only, about STESICHOROS'S protagonist, the monster, Geryon, were the real gems.
I was hoping...hoping...Carson's writing would continue in Stesichoros's same vein...NOT.
She adulterated it.
There is a way of viewing contemporary poetry and novels which has become common in the analysis of those who are well respected as "intellectual" literary critics.
It is not a new or fresh way of seeing writing.
No.
In fact, it is quite in line with the humanistic philosophies which have elevated and simultaneously plagued mankind for centuries.
No absolutes.
Anything goes.
The more base, the more "worthy".
If you want to know what this book is about, it comes to this: a boy is sexually abused by his big brother, his parents are pretty much disconnected from their offspring emotionally, the boy grows into a teen who gets involved with a perverse self-centered volcano-obsessed young guy, they break up, the boy [ oh he thinks he has wings] grows up looking at the world much as some type of savant might [or is that just the author's way of injecting figurative language into the verse?], he drifts, does nothing but take pictures that make sense to him, he gets back with the vapid disgusting young man, and then goes to see bread ovens built in the side of a volcano.
All of this poetic dribble is accomplished in 160 pages, double spaced, with tiny font and executed quite "prettily", of course.
After all, the "intellectual" "literaries" of the hour must have textual garbage validated by incredibly GORGEOUS language [with the exception of some foul language and graphic scenes, which pop up about five or six times in the book---more than needed, but apparently deemed necessary by the authoress to tell this useless tale].
I felt nothing but a gnawing disgust after I finished the last page.
"HONEY, get the fire pit ready!"
CLEARING UP
THE QUESTION OF
WHETHER The Autobiography of Red
IS WORTH THE PAPER IT
IS PRINTED ON
1. Either THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED is a good story/poem or it is not.
2. If the book/poem was good, either the goodness of it will enlighten the mind of its reader or it will not.
3. If it is not a book/poem which enlightens the mind of its reader, then there is a reason this is so.
4. If the reason is that the "protagonist"-monster never took his mistakes, and the evils which were acted upon him, which caused him to walk through life unengaged and basically a useless piece of red animated flesh with wings [ think of the STRANGER's protagonist, Meursault...but less of a true monster, since he is not a killer] by finding absolute truth, which could help him triumph over his trials, through application, or he did not.
5. If the protagonist never learned to triumph over all which beset him by grasping some absolute eternal truth, his personal anguish was all for nothing, and his mortality was a waste of time.
6. If his mortality was a waste of time, then reading about it is a waste of the reader's time.
7. If reading about the protagonist's useless life journey was a waste of the reader's time, then this book/poem is not a good read.
8. If this book/poem is not a good read, then it should get one-star.
9. If this book has only been rated with one star...it should be burned...so at least the pulpy-pages can be used to do SOMETHING positive, such as provide a bit of warmth to the person who purchased them.
10. If it should be burned, the reader who rated it with one star should light the match...
The BEST part of the book, NOT the story/poem written by Anne Carson, was the bits and pieces of the writing from which she took inspiration written centuries ago by STESICHOROS.
The ACTUAL fragments , really several paragraphs only, about STESICHOROS'S protagonist, the monster, Geryon, were the real gems.
I was hoping...hoping...Carson's writing would continue in Stesichoros's same vein...NOT.
She adulterated it.
There is a way of viewing contemporary poetry and novels which has become common in the analysis of those who are well respected as "intellectual" literary critics.
It is not a new or fresh way of seeing writing.
No.
In fact, it is quite in line with the humanistic philosophies which have elevated and simultaneously plagued mankind for centuries.
No absolutes.
Anything goes.
The more base, the more "worthy".
If you want to know what this book is about, it comes to this: a boy is sexually abused by his big brother, his parents are pretty much disconnected from their offspring emotionally, the boy grows into a teen who gets involved with a perverse self-centered volcano-obsessed young guy, they break up, the boy [ oh he thinks he has wings] grows up looking at the world much as some type of savant might [or is that just the author's way of injecting figurative language into the verse?], he drifts, does nothing but take pictures that make sense to him, he gets back with the vapid disgusting young man, and then goes to see bread ovens built in the side of a volcano.
All of this poetic dribble is accomplished in 160 pages, double spaced, with tiny font and executed quite "prettily", of course.
After all, the "intellectual" "literaries" of the hour must have textual garbage validated by incredibly GORGEOUS language [with the exception of some foul language and graphic scenes, which pop up about five or six times in the book---more than needed, but apparently deemed necessary by the authoress to tell this useless tale].
I felt nothing but a gnawing disgust after I finished the last page.
"HONEY, get the fire pit ready!"
May 30, 2022
It happens to me frequently.
You disappear? Yes and then come back.
Moments of death I call them.
There is a kind of silence, quietude, in this piece of literature that rings from the opening lines to the last page. A lack of noise as Geryon stands outside of his kindergarten class in the drifting snow, the soundlessness of his youth he spent with Heracles, the void that chasms open as he leaves his home, hides his wings, hungers for food when presented to him. There is such disquiet loneliness. You can feel Geryon feeling that loneliness, so apart from others, so alone.
I was waiting for the dog but there was no dog. Maybe this was a good thing.
———————————————————————————
If I were more intelligent, I’d understand this. But my God! Geryon 💔
You disappear? Yes and then come back.
Moments of death I call them.
There is a kind of silence, quietude, in this piece of literature that rings from the opening lines to the last page. A lack of noise as Geryon stands outside of his kindergarten class in the drifting snow, the soundlessness of his youth he spent with Heracles, the void that chasms open as he leaves his home, hides his wings, hungers for food when presented to him. There is such disquiet loneliness. You can feel Geryon feeling that loneliness, so apart from others, so alone.
I was waiting for the dog but there was no dog. Maybe this was a good thing.
———————————————————————————
If I were more intelligent, I’d understand this. But my God! Geryon 💔
December 6, 2017
Strange, and lovely. Funny and sad. a wonderful book I will certainly read again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,922 reviews