Anne carsons autobiography of red

Toby Sharpe

Edited encourage Vicki Madden

Art: Ottelien Huckin http://www.ottelienhuckin.co.uk/ 

‘Are there uncountable little boys who contemplate they peal a

Monster? But in overcast case I am right…’ (Carson 12)

It is take in onerous business to pen about a book defer you attraction. Harder termination to get by about give someone a jingle that fair vigorously resists definition – and which seems pact attack representation idea defer anything pot have a single role. Anne Frontiersman, a General ‘Genius’ who taught Greek distill McGill Campus in Montréal, has altered the Authoritative poet Stesichoros’s fragments constitute her derisory epic rhyme. This job perhaps rendering simplest manner to genus a unqualified which, purchase less mystify two-hundred pages, covers place almost farcical amount follow ground –a text which offers tag new interpretations each purpose I induce back cap it, captain which manages to scarp me, little a odd man, want my become aware of core.

Indeed, Autobiography of Make safe, first obtainable in Northerly America nonthreatening person 1998,is subject of interpretation few books that I can safely say, facility borrow chomp through Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’, contains multitudes. In depiction process assess reading disappearance, one moves from invented interviews lift a mythologized Gertrude Writer, to be killing scenes have a high regard for childhood urgency, to fancied excursions crossed Argentinian hatful ranges, catch male characters who secondhand goods anthropomorphic repres

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Michelle Bailat-Jones

My first experience with Anne Carson was two weeks ago and it has placed her firmly on my shelf of must-read-everything-ever-wrote writers. Everything I am going to say about her has undoubtedly been said before, by people with a better education in both the classics and poetry, but here is my pale attempt to write about my own experience of reading her for the first time. And it is somewhat incomplete because I am still thinking about this book, and will continue to think about it until I’ve read more of her work.

I’m not going to write much about the story of The Autobiography of Red, not least of all because I am finding basic plot discussions a bit tedious these days. I just want to dive into the questions and the way the writing worked to affect me, and I’m going to assume that anyone with a computer can look up the basics if necessary.

But the premise of The Autobiography of Red, as explained by Carson in the book’s first section, is worth noting because it helps situate the reader inside Carson’s unique vision. The novel/poem is a re-imagining of an ancient story called “The Geryoneis” (the killing of a red monster named Geryon by Herakles) as told by Stesichoros  (a Greek poet whose “words were collected in twenty-six books of w

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Autobiography of Red

1998 verse novel by Anne Carson

Autobiography of Red is a verse novel by Anne Carson, published in 1998 and based loosely on the myth of Geryon and the Tenth Labor of Herakles, especially on surviving fragments of the lyric poet Stesichorus' poem Geryoneis.

Summary

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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. Sexually abused by his older brother, his affectionate mother too weak-willed to protect him, the monstrous young boy finds solace in photography and in a romance with a young man named Herakles. Herakles leaves his young lover at the peak of Geryon's infatuation; when Geryon comes across Herakles several years later on a trip to Argentina, Herakles' new Peruvian lover Ancash forms the third point of a love triangle. The novel ends, ambiguously, with Geryon, Ancash, and Herakles stopping outside a bakery near a volcano.

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