Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson (English) Paperback Book

Description: Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson From an award-winning poet comes a novel in verse that re-imagines an ancient Greek epic as a modern coming-of-age story. A young boy, who is also a winged red monster, reveals his tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at age five. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description 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. 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.A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARNational Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." --Michael Ondaatje"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice Author Biography ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and has been a professor of Classics for over thirty years. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. Review "A profound love story...sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review "A deeply odd and immensely engaging book.... [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice Prizes Short-listed for Boston Book Review (Fiction) 1999 Review Quote "This book is amazing--I havent discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro "A profound love story...sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review Description for Reading Group Guide "This book is amazing--I havent discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups reading and discussion of the work of Anne Carson, whom Michael Ondaatje praised as "the most exciting poet writing in English today." Carson is a winner of the prestigious MacArthur fellowship, and has been the recipient of much admiration in the literary world. She is credited with the invention of an entirely new kind of poetry, fusing free verse with prose passages, using pastiche to startling effect, combining searing emotion with austere intellect. Interspersing her own words with quotes and references to sources that range from classical Greek literature, St. Augustine, the Bible, and the Tao to Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Carson constructs an astonishing art that is able to arouse, like nothing else in recent years, new emotional and intellectual energies in her readers. As one reviewer commented, "Theres good reason that Carsons reputation has soared to a level equal to that of the half-dozen most admired contemporary American poets. . . . She has . . . a vast habitat, to every bit of which she brings powerful perception and a freshness as startling as a loud knock at the door" (Calvin Bedient, "Celebrating Imperfection," a review of Men in the Off Hours . The New York Times Book Review , 5/14/00). Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide 1. As an epigraph to the introduction, Carson quotes Gertrude Stein: "I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do" [p. 3], and goes on to say that she admires the way Stesichoros broke away from the conventional use of language: "Stesichoros released being" [p. 5]. Which passages of Carsons own writing in Autobiography of Red exemplify this ideal of unconventional language, unconventional perception, unconventional seeing? 2. Geryon, we are told, likes to plan his autobiography "in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul" [p. 60]. As a child he has difficulty with the intensity and strangeness of his own perceptions. He suffers, but he also has powers that make him unique. Is there a connection between being a monster and being an artist? In what ways does Geryons creativity manifest itself as his story proceeds? 3. How important to his story--he calls himself, at one point, "loveslave" [p. 55]-- is the relationship of Geryons masculinity to his lovelorn state? How important is his homosexuality? What is the poem making clear about the relationship between desire and will? If you have read The Beauty of the Husband, how does Geryons position compare to that of the wife? 4. Geryons autobiography begins with "Total Facts Known About Geryon" [p. 37]. Carson takes these elements from Stesichoros, but she creates a different ending. Instead of being killed by Herakles, Geryon proves himself to be one of the Yazcamac, "People who saw the inside of the volcano. / And came back" [pp. 128-29]. Why does she alter the original storys plot? 5. How do the imagery and symbolism of the volcano work throughout the poem? How does the image of the volcano shed light on Geryons problems with inside and outside, as well as his fear of entrapment or confinement? More specifically, how does the Emily Dickinson poem that appears on page 22 ("The reticent volcano keeps / His never slumbering plan") relate to chapter XLVI of Geryons autobiography? For discussion of the work of Anne Carson: 1. In "Essay on What I Think About Most" Carson writes that she admires Alkmans poem because of "the impression it gives / of blurting out the truth in spite of itself" [p. 34]. Does the plain declarative style of Carsons verse give the same impression? She further states that Alkmans simplicity "is a fake / Alkman is not simple at all, / he is a master contriver" [ Men in the Off Hours , pp. 34-35]. Might the same be said of Carson herself? What is simple about her work? What aspects of her work are complex, difficult, even impossible to comprehend? Are her contrivances part of an effort to alienate, or rather to seduce, the reader? 2. How does the work of Anne Carson change a readers expectations about poetry--about what poetry is, what poetry does, the emotional and intellectual effects of poetry upon a reader? Is she asking us--or forcing us--to reevaluate our aesthetic criteria? 3. In a strongly positive review, Calvin Bedient makes a comment on Carsons work that might be read as a qualification: "Her spare, short-sentence style is built for speed. Her generalizations flare, then go out. Nothing struggles up into a vision, a large hold on things. The poems are self-consuming."5 Poets working in more traditional forms, like the sonnet for instance, have tended to create poems that work through a process of thought and arrive at a new conclusion or perspective; they offer the reader what Robert Frost called "a momentary stay against confusion." How does Carsons work differ from more traditional forms of poetry? Is it troubling or is it liberating that she doesnt seem bound to conclusions, to consoling gestures toward the reader? 4. The biographical note for The Beauty of the Husband offers only the statement, "Anne Carson lives in Canada." While it is a general rule in poetry that the speaker of any given poem is not necessarily the author and is often an invented persona, does Carsons work lead you to certain assumptions about the facts of her life, her habits, her intellectual world, her losses, her griefs? Does her work have a deliberately confessional aspect--like that of Robert Lowell or Anne Sexton--or is it difficult to tell with Carson what has actually been experienced and what has been imagined? What issues, experiences, and concerns are repeated throughout her work? Excerpt from Book RED MEAT: WHAT DIFFERENCE DID STESICHOROS MAKE? I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do. GERTRUDE STEIN He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet. Born about 650 B.C. on the north coast of Sicily in a city called Himera, he lived among refugees who spoke a mixed dialect of Chalcidian and Doric. A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen. Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do. Stesichoros words were collected in twenty-six books of which there remain to us a dozen or so titles and several collections of fragments. Not much is known about his working life (except the famous story that he was struck blind by Helen; see Appendixes A, B, C). He seems to have had a great popular success. How did the critics regard him? Many ancient praises adhere to his name. "Most Homeric of the lyric poets," says Longinus. "Makes those old stories new," says Suidas. "Driven by a craving for change," says Dionysios of Halikarnassos. "What a sweet genius in the use of adjectives!" adds Hermogenes. Here we touch the core of the question "What difference did Stesichoros make?" A comparison may be useful. When Gertrude Stein had to sum up Picasso she said, "This one was working." So say of Stesichoros, "This one was making adjectives." What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning "placed on top," "added," "appended," "imported," "foreign." Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being. Of course there are several different ways to be. In the world of the Homeric epic, for example, being is stable and particularity is set fast in tradition. When Homer mentions blood, blood is black. When women appear, women are neat-ankled or glancing. Poseidon always has the blue eyebrows of Poseidon. Gods laughter is unquenchable. Human knees are quick. The sea is unwearying. Death is bad. Cowards livers are white. Homers epithets are a fixed diction with which Homer fastens every substance in the world to its aptest attribute and holds them in place for epic consumption. There is a passion in it but what kind of passion? "Consumption is not a passion for substances but a passion for the code," says Baudrillard. So into the still surface of this code Stesichoros was born. And Stesichoros was studying the surface restlessly. It leaned away from him. He went closer. It stopped. "Passion for substances" seems a good description of that moment. For no reason that anyone can name, Stesichoros began to undo the latches. Stesichoros released being. All the substances in the world went floating up. Suddenly there was nothing to interfere with horses being hollow hooved. Or a river being root silver. Or a child bruiseless. Or hell as deep as the sun is high. Or Herakles ordeal strong. Or a planet middle night stuck. Or an insomniac outside the joy. Or killings cream black. Some substances proved more complex. To Helen of Troy, for example, was attached an adjectival tradition of whoredom already old by the time Homer used it. When Stesichoros unlatched her epithet from Helen there flowed out such a light as may have blinded him for a moment. This is a big question, the question of the blinding of Stesichoros by Helen (see Appendixes A, B), although generally regarded as unanswerable (but see Appendix C). A more tractable example is Geryon. Geryon is the name of a character in ancient Greek myth about whom Stesichoros wrote a very long lyric poem in dactylo-epitrite meter and triadic structure. Some eighty-four papyrus fragments and a half-dozen citations survive, which go by the name Geryoneis ("The Geryon Matter") in standard editions. They tell of a strange winged red monster who lived on an island called Erytheia (which is an adjective meaning simply "The Red Place") quietly tending a herd of magical red cattle, until one day the hero Herakles came across the sea and killed him to get the cattle. There were many different ways to tell a story like this. Herakles was an important Greek hero and the elimination of Geryon constituted one of His celebrated Labors. If Stesichoros had been a more conventional poet he might have taken the point of view of Herakles and framed a thrilling account of the victory of culture over monstrosity. But instead the extant fragments of Stesichoros poem offer a tantalizing cross section of scenes, both proud and pitiful, from Geryons own experience. We see his red boys life and his little dog. A scene of wild appeal from his mother, which breaks off. Interspersed shots of Herakles approaching over the sea. A flash of the gods in heaven pointing to Geryons doom. The battle itself. The moment when everything goes suddenly slow and Herakles arrow divides Geryons skull. We see Herakles kill the little dog with His famous club. But that is enough proemium. You can answer for yourself the question "What difference did Stesichoros make?" by considering his masterpiece. Some of its principal fragments are below. If you find the text difficult, you are not alone. Time has dealt harshly with Stesichoros. No passage longer than thirty lines is quoted from him and papyrus scraps (still being found: the most recent fragments were recovered from cartonnage in Egypt in 1977) withhold as much as they tell. The whole corpus of the fragments of Stesichoros in the original Greek has been published thirteen times so far by different editors, beginning with Bergk in 1882. No edition is exactly the same as any other in its contents or its ordering of the contents. Bergk says the history of a text is like a long caress. However that may be, the fragments of the Geryoneis itself read as if Stesichoros had composed a substantial narrative poem then ripped it to pieces and buried the pieces in a box with some song lyrics and lecture notes and scraps of meat. The fragment numbers tell you roughly how the pieces fell out of the box. You can of course keep shaking the box. "Believe me for meat and for myself," as Gertrude Stein says. Here. Shake. RED MEAT: FRAGMENTS OF STESICHOROS I. GERYON Geryon was a monster everything about him was red Put his snout out of the covers in the morning it was red How stiff the red landscape where his cattle scraped against Their hobbles in the red wind Burrowed himself down in the red dawn jelly of Geryons Dream Geryons dream began red then slipped out of the vat and ran Upsail broke silver shot up through his roots like a pup Secret pup At the front end of another red day II. MEANWHILE HE CAME Across the salt knobs it was Him Knew about the homegold Had sighted red smoke above the red spires III. GERYONS PARENTS If you persist in wearing your mask at the supper table Well Goodnight Then they said and drove him up Those hemorrhaging stairs to the hot dry Arms To the ticking red taxi of the incubus Dont want to go want to stay Downstairs and read IV. GERYONS DEATH BEGINS Geryon walked the red length of his mind and answered No It was murder And torn to see the cattle lay All these darlings said Geryon And now me V. GERYONS REVERSIBLE DESTINY His mother saw it mothers are like that Trust me she said Engineer of his softness You dont have to make up your mind right away Behind her red right cheek Geryon could see Coil of the hot plate starting to glow VI. MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN Athena was looking down through the floor Of the glass-bottomed boat Athena pointed Zeus looked Him VII. GERYONS WEEKEND Later well later they left the bar went back to the centaurs Place the centaur had a cup made out of a skull Holding three Measures of wine. Holding it he drank Come over here you can Bring your drink if youre afraid to come alone The centaur Patted the sofa beside him Reddish yellow small alive animal Not a bee moved up Geryons spine on the inside VIII. GERYONS FATHER A quiet root may know how to holler He liked to Suck words Here is an almighty one he would say After days of standing in the doorway NIGHTBOLLSNORTED IX. GERYONS WAR RECORD Geryon lay on the ground covering his ears The sound Of the horses like roses being burned alive X. SCHOOLING In those days the police were weak Family was strong Hand in hand the first day Geryons mother took him to School She neatened his little red wings and pushed him In through the door XI. RIGHT Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him Joyfully XII. WINGS Steps off a scraped March sky and sinks Up into the blind Atlantic morning One small Red dog jumping across the beach miles below Like a freed shadow XIII. HERAKLES KILLING CLUB Little red dog did not see it he felt it All Events carry but one XIV. HERAKLES ARROW Arrow means kill It parted Geryons skull like a comb Made The boy neck lean At an odd slow angle sideways as whe Details ISBN037570129X Author Anne Carson Short Title AUTOBIOG OF RED Pages 160 Language English ISBN-10 037570129X ISBN-13 9780375701290 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 811.54 Year 1999 Imprint Random House USA Inc Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Residence Montreal, -CN Birth 1950 Subtitle A Novel in Verse DOI 10.1604/9780375701290 AU Release Date 1999-07-27 NZ Release Date 1999-07-27 US Release Date 1999-07-27 UK Release Date 1999-07-27 Publisher Random House USA Inc Series Vintage Contemporaries Publication Date 1999-07-27 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:43887085;

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