Autobiography of Red
Autobiography of Red is a verse novel by Anne Carson, published in 1998 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The work reimagines the plot of the fragmentary poem Geryoneis by the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, which recounts the episode in the life of Heracles in which he kills the red, winged monster known as Geryon to steal his cattle. In the novel, Carson imagines Geryon as a gay teenager with wings living in the present day who falls in love with a rebellious young man named Heracles, who breaks his heart.
The novel is considered one of Carson's best works and the one that brought her name to fame. It is also regarded as one of the most complex characterizations of an LGBT character in contemporary English-language literature. Among the main themes it addresses are lost love, the image of the artist as a monstrous being, and the role of translations.
In 2013, Carson published a sequel to the work titled Red Doc> in which she continues the story of Geryon and Heracles, employing a similar poetic style.
Summary
Autobiography of Red is the story of a boy named Geryon who, at least in a metaphorical sense, is the Greek monster Geryon. It is unclear how much of the mythological Geryon's connection to the story's Geryon is literal, and how much is metaphorical.Geryon is a small child who lives on an Atlantic island with his family. At a young age, his older brother begins to sexually abuse him, leading Geryon to start writing an autobiography. When he reaches 14, he meets a boy two years older named Heracles, with whom he falls deeply in love. Heracles and Geryon begin a romantic relationship and later travel to Hades, Heracles' hometown, on the other side of the island. There they stay with Heracles' grandmother, who shows them a photograph of a volcano that erupted in 1923 and destroyed the town. Days later, Heracles ends the relationship with Geryon and sends him back home, leaving him devastated.
When he reaches 22 years old, Geryon travels to Buenos Aires, where he attends a philosophy conference and visits a tango bar. The next day he coincidentally runs into Heracles, who had come to Buenos Aires with Ancash, his new boyfriend, to record volcano sounds for a documentary about Emily Dickinson. Geryon feels his old feelings for Heracles rekindle and becomes jealous of Ancash. Days later, the three meet, and after Heracles steals a wooden tiger from a carousel, they agree to travel together to Peru, Ancash's home country. During the plane trip, Geryon rests his head on Heracles' shoulder, who discreetly begins to masturbate him while Ancash sleeps.
Once they arrive in Lima, they spend the night with Ancash's mother, who was originally from Huaraz. Ancash discovers Geryon's wings and is surprised by them. He then tells him the legend of the "Yazcol Yazcamac," men who were thrown into a volcano in a town called Jucu, north of Huaraz, and emerged with red skin and wings after leaving behind their weaknesses and mortality. The next day they decide to travel to Huaraz. One night during the journey, Geryon and Heracles have sex, but Geryon cries upon realizing Heracles is not the same one he loved in his adolescence. The next morning, Ancash hits Geryon and asks if he still loves Heracles, to which he replies that he loved the Heracles of the past. After Ancash asks to see him fly, Geryon takes his recorder at dawn and flies to the Jucu volcano while recording its sounds. In the novel's final chapter, Geryon, Heracles, and Ancash walk the streets of Jucu and watch the volcano's fire.
The book also contains Carson's very loose translation of the Geryoneis fragments, using many anachronisms and taking many liberties, and some discussion of both Stesichorus and the Geryon myth, including a fictional interview with "Stesichoros", a veiled reference to Gertrude Stein.
Main characters
- Geryon: the story's protagonist, a gay teenager with wings, shy and melancholic in character. From a young age he feels a propensity toward art, first by writing an autobiography in which he imagines his death similarly to the original Greek myth, later through photography. When he meets Heracles he falls intensely in love with him. Unlike the literal murder in the Greek myth, the novel's Geryon experiences a metaphorical death when Heracles breaks his heart. In the years following his romantic disappointment he lives depressed and finds escape in photography, until later reuniting with Heracles. To prevent people from seeing his wings he hides them under his jacket, but later learns that red, winged people were those who survived volcano fires.
- Heracles: a rebellious, burly, selfish, and charismatic young man, two years older than Geryon and who describes himself as "someone who will never feel satisfied." They meet in chapter seven, when Heracles is sixteen and arrives on a bus from New Mexico. They soon become lovers and Heracles takes the more sexual and dominant role in the relationship. After a trip to his grandmother's house, Heracles ends things with Geryon and sends him home. Years later they reunite in Buenos Aires, where Heracles had gone with his new boyfriend, Ancash.
- Ancash: Heracles' new boyfriend, of Peruvian origin. He meets Geryon during his stay in Buenos Aires with Heracles; later the three decide to travel to Peru. Ancash is the only character who speaks about Geryon's wings and upon discovering them reveals that Geryon belonged to a race of sacred men known as "Yazcol Yazcamac." When he learns Geryon had sex with Heracles, he hits him, but they later talk and when Geryon admits he loved the Heracles of the past, Ancash says he wanted to see him use his wings.
- Geryon's brother: mistreats Geryon from childhood, calls him stupid, and refuses to take him to his classroom at school. One night when Geryon stays in his room he sexually abuses him, a situation repeated for a long time in which his brother gives Geryon marbles as compensation. Years later he works as a sports commentator on radio. In Greek mythological genealogy, as narrated in Hesiod's Theogony, Geryon has no brother but a sister, Echidna, mother of some of mythology's most famous monsters.
Composition
According to Carson, she decided to make Geryon and Heracles lovers due to her interest in how various homoerotic references are incorporated in classical Greek works, such as the Iliad.
Structure and style
The work is divided into seven parts: two introductions, three appendices, the novel proper, and an epilogue. The introductions are titled "Red Meat." The first discusses the nature of adjectives and Stesichorus' inclination to focus on characters' interiority, a propensity Carson supports and which, according to her, distinguishes him from Homer's epic narratives. The second introduction gathers surviving fragments of the Geryoneis, translated and ordered by the author. In the three appendices, Carson treats with a tone parodying academic discourse Stesichorus' blindness, supposedly caused by Helen of Troy, and the poet's attempts at atonement. The epilogue shows a fictional interview by Carson with Stesichorus.The novel section, titled "Autobiography of Red: A Romance," consists of about 13,000 lines divided into 47 chapters, each one to seven pages long, and narrates the story in third person chronologically. Chapters have short titles, often single words, and are written in a lyric narrative style alternating long and short lines without rhymes. According to poet Elizabeth Macklin, the lines give the text supplementary punctuation and help generate emphasis.
Six of the last seven chapters include the word "Photographs" in their title and describe photos included in Geryon's autobiography. The exception is the final chapter, titled "The Flashes in Which a Man Owns Himself."
Critic Sam Anderson describes the book as follows:
The book is subtitled "A Novel in Verse," but—as usual with Carson—neither "novel" nor "verse" quite seems to apply. It begins as if it were a critical study of the ancient Greek poet Stesichoros, with special emphasis on a few surviving fragments he wrote about a minor character from Greek mythology, Geryon, a winged red monster who lives on a red island herding red cattle. Geryon is most famous as a footnote in the life of Herakles, whose 10th labor was to sail to that island and steal those cattle—in the process of which, almost as an afterthought, he killed Geryon by shooting him in the head with an arrow.
Autobiography of Red purports to be Geryon's autobiography. Carson transposes Geryon's story, however, into the modern world, so that he is suddenly not just a monster but a moody, artsy, gay teenage boy navigating the difficulties of sex and love and identity. His chief tormentor is Herakles, a charismatic ne'er-do-well who ends up breaking Geryon's heart. The book is strange and sweet and funny, and the remoteness of the ancient myth crossed with the familiarity of the modern setting creates a particularly Carsonian effect: the paradox of distant closeness.
Central themes
Geryon's monstrosity
Autobiography of Red is a coming-of-age novel exploring Geryon's childhood and youth, described as a red monster with wings, and his emotions upon being rejected by others due to his monstrous characteristics. Carson's humanization of Geryon fits a trend in recent centuries' literature seeking to revalue the "monster" beyond its traditional role as heroic figure obstacle. Geryon's case is notable because Stesichorus himself had already made an initial effort to humanize his figure by narrating events from his perspective in the Geryoneis. Geryon's ambivalent representation is why figures like Dante Alighieri showed him as the "personification of fraud," with a body mixing human and animal parts.In the novel, Carson goes further than Stesichorus and completely reverses protagonist and antagonist roles of Heracles and Geryon by showing the latter as a victim of violence despite his monster identity.
One of the protagonist's first revealed characteristics states: "Geryon was a monster everything about him was red." Red's importance lies in its metaphor for Geryon's monstrosity, the main characteristic leading to rejection. The exact meaning of red has been explored by several scholars. Interpretations of what it symbolizes in Geryon include: his interiority, his creativity and inner strength. According to professor Dina Georgis, Geryon's wings represent the physical mark of everything making him feel vulnerable and different from others, particularly his homosexuality. This is reflected in the work in his attempts to hide his wings from others, fearing their presence would arouse hatred and rejection.
An important point is that, despite Geryon's wings and red color not being mentioned by any other character throughout most of the book, their presence is literal and not metaphorical. Although lack of mentions could be explained by Geryon's attempts to hide his wings under jackets, it is peculiar that not even Heracles mentions them in moments when their presence would be obvious, like during sex. However, the wings later provoke a quite realistic reaction when seen by Ancash, Heracles' new boyfriend. Moreover, near the novel's end, Geryon uses his wings once to fly.
Returning to Geryon, Carson is explicit in narrating how his monstrous characteristics, instead of signaling danger, are marks leading to exclusion. From childhood, Geryon feels marginalized by schoolmates and mistreated by his brother, leading him to isolate himself. When his brother begins sexually abusing him, one tactic to keep silent is threatening to tell at home how "nobody at school."
Geryon's constant self-questioning later leads him to ask: "Who can blame a monster for being red?" as rejection of the classical monster role narrative that Geryon refuses to embody. At the novel's end, Geryon finally frees himself from the bonds imposed by his monstrosity without rejecting this part of his identity but accepting it as integral to himself, without shame or guilt. Once discovering his relation to the "Yazcol Yazcamac," Geryon flies into a volcano crater and emerges as a heroic figure, still with characteristics defining him as monster but having left insecurities behind.