Autobiography of Red

Autobiography of Red is a novel in verse built on the ruins of an ancient poem. Stesichoros, a Greek poet of the sixth century BC, told the story of Geryon, a winged red monster whom Herakles killed in the course of his labors to steal his cattle, and only fragments of that poem survive. Anne Carson, a classicist, opens the book with a playful essay on Stesichoros and her own loose translation of the fragments, then moves Geryon into the modern world. Her Geryon is a shy red boy who hides his wings under his jacket, is devoted to his chain smoking mother, and is sexually abused by his older brother. He starts writing his autobiography as a small child and later turns to photography. At fourteen he meets Herakles, who is sixteen, carefree and charismatic, and falls in love. Here Herakles does not kill Geryon; he breaks his heart, ending the affair during a stay with Herakles's grandmother, who once photographed an erupting volcano.

Years later, living a numb life, Geryon runs into Herakles in Buenos Aires. Herakles now has a Peruvian boyfriend, Ancash, and the three fly together to Lima, where Ancash discovers Geryon's wings and tells him a legend from the Andes of people who were thrown into a volcano and came out red and winged, survivors of the fire. On a trip into the Andes the triangle turns violent, but the journey ends with Geryon flying over the volcano at dawn with a tape recorder running, and the last chapter leaves the three of them watching its fire. An imagined interview with Stesichoros closes the book.

The story runs to 47 short chapters in long and short unrhymed lines, and it reads far faster than the scholarly frame suggests. Carson is funny, the myth sits oddly close to bus stops, graffiti and an all night tango singer, and she is frank about both sex and cruelty. Readers who know Greek will enjoy the scholarly wit of the frame; others can go straight to the story, which stands alone. One reviewer, writing in 2000, thought it declined into a dull narrative after a promising start. It suits anyone who remembers being fourteen and in love with the wrong person. One NPR reviewer, addressing readers who never read poetry, called it the book he had pressed on more people than any other in a decade.