Autobiography of Red

Trey really wanted me to read Anne Carson's Autobiography in Red: A Novel in Verse. He had loaned it to me last year but I only got about halfway through before I had to put it on the back burner.

Like most things (I'm coming to realize) I plowed straight through and let the words wash over me. When I consider how I listen to music, I think I am very present. By the time the piece ends, I couldn't tell you what happened at the beginning. While that bothers me enormously, analysis of a piece in real time tends to diminish the experience. Analysis happens before the experience, if possible. My memory simply does not retain most things, so I can hardly ever point to anything specific and have an opinion about it, much less add commentary to an intelligent conversation.

That is all to say, I liked the poem but as usual struggle to say anything of significance about what I experienced in the writing. My first question upon picking up the book was, 'what does this have to do with Geryon and Herakles?' There are no red cattle and Hercules does not kill Geryon. It seems to relate to the myth nominally, but I suppose the important thing I took away from it was the establishment of the story as myth. Geryon's wings are what physically differentiates him from the rest of humanity. But he is not viewed as a monster by the people he interacts with.

The way the story is framed with a history of the poet Stesichoros is strange. It's as if Carson is pretending to invoke his style, based on fragments which may or may not actually exist. The poem itself is clearly modern, with buses and telephones and Geryon's knowledge of German philosophy and the settings of cafes in Argentina and Peru. The poem is also bookended by Emily Dickinson's poem 1748. The theme of time and immortality runs throughout the poem.

The simplest description would be that Autobiography of Red is a coming of age novel written in verse. It might have been logical to include more of Geryon's writing in his autobiography, later in the novel. However, I think that his photography takes the place of writing in his autobiography. An extremely interesting artistic choice was making Geryon and Herakles lovers. Love is almost always a central part of coming of age tales, but again I wonder if it would have been just as effective if the characters had different names. The novel traces the loss of innocence, the development of man as a relational being (a lover), heartbreak, growth out of the resulting self-discovery, and finally reconciliation.

Besides pointing out allusions, themes, and symbols like volcanoes, I feel that there is only so much I can to do analyze a poem, particularly a modern poem. Autobiography of Red makes a hell of a lot more sense than, say, Paterson, by WCW. I think I've officially given up reading that poem, but who knows. There's a lot of beautiful verse within the confusing amalgamation.

So what is my final word? How do I judge a work? On the whole I enjoyed it. A few things were confusing, in that I wonder why the poet included such and such a scene, or worded a paragraph in a certain way. It connected with me emotionally. I guess that means I had empathy for the characters. One thing I like about myself is my ability to suspend disbelief. As left brained as I am, I embrace other worlds through art and literature. Yet I don't really form sentences like: I (dis)liked X example because Y reason. I can't articulate why I like what I like. It's an objective fact more than a subjective opinion.

Why does it matter to have an opinion on artistic works? If it effects you and resonates with your soul, it's probably worth taking the time to experience. Autobiography of Red resonated with my soul. I think that's the best endorsement I can give.