Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

“As I rebuild the WLS archive with books I've read from 2011 through to 2025, I want to build a fully-fledged ecosystem of books I've read and recommend. I'd like to be able to reference and speak to any I've finished. For books I haven't reviewed (or can't entirely remember), please enjoy this brief questionnaire that can help you decide whether it's a read you'd like to pursue. Some of these are favorites I just haven't gotten around to fully reviewing yet—I'll explain in each description, but I hope this Q&A can be illuminating to you in the meantime.”

The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in 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.

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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.

Why Did I Read This Book?

When I was in college, I started as an English major. In fact, I was maybe one class away from graduating with a creative writing minor once I switched to history. I had to take a seminar class on poetry with a professor I adored, Professor Wheeler, and we read Autobiography of Red.

The class itself was phenomenal and we read some amazing work. Autobiography of Red fit my taste entirely too. It's frankly gorgeous, pulls from mythology in a highly creative and inventive way, and is stunning in terms of poignancy and nostalgia.

I think a lot about synesthesia, and I got to write an essay incorporating some of my favorite topics—like literary synesthesia (as a mechanism) versus physiological synesthesia, and how we could determine from the passage which was which. Whether they flattened together enough that the definition itself ceased to matter. To date, that essay is probably my favorite piece of academic writing and research I've ever produced—and it even got awarded. Now that I know more about neuroaesthetics and how that framework impacts my reading, writing, and curiosity, the intersection naturally makes a lot of sense to me. I pulled in the mind-body problem, the mental satisfaction of multiple "layered" senses, the impossibility of capturing a full experience in language. Hindsight bias, baby!

All in all, I'm extremely grateful to have read—nearly mistyped "red," a slip—this book and consider it one of the Greats. It's the quintessential Grace book in understanding what I think about, connect to, and what language I prefer.

What's This Book About?

Autobiography of Red is a novel in verse focused on Geryon, a winged red monster. (In Greek mythology—or rather, in Rick Riordan's MG retellings, he's a creature with three heads and one body descended from Medusa. He goes up against Hercules.) In Carson's retelling, however, Geryon's an ostracized, lonely boy-monster. Herakles is a lover. His family resents him for his otherness. All in all, he's piecing together his meaning and desire despite his many challenges.

It's a quick read, but gives you a lot to sort through. I've underlined and relished and ached over so many lines, and it was such a rich work to discuss in a class too.

What Do I Remember Most About It?

Like I said, Autobiography of Red has been an enduring favorite since I first read it. Even now, I'm tempted to paste in every page to this review as an example of how unreal and poetic the writing is. It's sensory, vivid, layered, passionate. I'm a line-level writer and a line-level reader too.

In some ways, it's like The Little Prince in that you can read it on a sparse surface-level too, but you can also dig and dig and dig forever. Excavate exactly what you need and then some. It's a powerful, evocative work made all the better by its format limitations and length.

Who's It Best for?

If you align at all with my taste in books, this is the one you need to read: colorful, striking language; whimsical, ethereal storytelling; characters defined by desperate longing and the search for resonance. Hell, if you don't know if you align with my taste in books, this'll give you an intro real quick. It's 160 pages only, so a relatively quick and easy read.

It's satisfying, but it lingers with you—so has that bittersweet combination of holistic execution and unanswered questions.

A Few Lines & Moments I Loved

“The break in [Herakles’s] voice made Geryon think of some reason of going into a barn first thing in the morning when sunlight strikes a bale of raw hay still wet from the night.”

“Something black and heavy dropped between them like a smell of velvet.”

“The instant of nature forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny. He burned in the presence of his mother I hardly know you anymore, she said leaning against the doorway of his room. It had rained suddenly at suppertime, now sunset was startling drops at the window. Stale peace of old bedtimes filled the room. Love does not make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other from opposite shores of the light.”

“Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition.”

If You Liked It, Read These Others:

stunning poetry / The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

bittersweet retelling / Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

awkward otherness / The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

unhappy families / Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

childhood loneliness / History of Wolves by Emily Friedlund

strange, risky, but good / A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz

I wish I could talk about this book for forever.