The Stay-In Weather Sale: 20% off select books
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Award Winners
    • Signed Editions
    • Digital Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Book Club Subscriptions
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Read Rise Resist Gear
    • Journals & Notebooks
    • Games
    • Socks
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store
McAfee Secure

Don't Miss

  • Looking Forward Sale
  • The Stay-In Weather Sale
  • Indiespensable 90:
    My Year Abroad
  • Our 2021 TBR List
  • Powell's Virtual Events
  • Oregon Battle of the Books

Visit Our Stores


Emily B.: Black History Month 2021: Black Women in Science (0 comment)
The books below are a starting point for delving into the scientific legacy of Black women around the world and for inspiring the next generation to follow in their footsteps...
Read More»
  • Rhianna Walton: Black History Month 2021: Rethinking the Classics (0 comment)
  • Rachel Marks: No Bull, Just Books: Recommendations for the Year of the Ox (1 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Reading Group Guide

ISBN13: 9780375701290
ISBN10: 037570129X



All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
$16.00
New Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
10Burnside
2Cedar Hills
1Hawthorne
20Local Warehouse
20Remote Warehouse

From Powells.com

"A beautiful, shattering novel in verse drawn from Greek mythology but set in modern times — this is a book that will remind you of your first love and first heartbreak." Powell's Pride Month Staff Pick

Staff Pick

If the goal of poetry is to reflect life, then Anne Carson's desolate and descriptive The Autobiography of Red is great poetry. This novella, written in verse, reveals many ways a heart can break. The tale of Geryon and Herakles is well worn, a tattered page in the book of mythology. But Carson sparks the tale anew, turning Geryon into a likable if unknowable monster who falls in love with Herakles, resulting in heartache and ruin. Lauded by authors and readers alike, Anne Carson is at her best when she marks down the little differences that set us apart. Recommended By Alex Y., Powells.com

Immerse yourself in this daring work of absolute genius. Part poetry, part myth, part coming-of-age love story for a gay teenage boy, it's like nothing else I've ever come across. A slim volume of exquisitely crafted lines, perfectly evoking that sense of wonder that only seems to manifest itself in the poetic language. This is magic! Recommended By Nicholas Y., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

National book Critics Circle Award Finalist  

"Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today."--Michael Ondaatje

"This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro

            

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, 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 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

Review

"Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." Michael Ondaatje

Review

"This book is amazing — I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." Alice Munro

Review

"A profound love story...sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." The New York Times Book Review

Review

"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book....[Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." The Village Voice

Synopsis

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, 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.


About the Author

Anne Carson lives in Canada.

From the Hardcover edition.


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 Carson's 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 Geryon's 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 Geryon's 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 Geryon's position compare to that of the wife?

4. Geryon's 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 story's 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 Geryon's 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 Geryon's autobiography?

For discussion of the work of Anne Carson:

1. In "Essay on What I Think About Most" Carson writes that she admires Alkman's poem because of "the impression it gives / of blurting out the truth in spite of itself" [p. 34]. Does the plain declarative style of Carson's verse give the same impression? She further states that Alkman's 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 reader's 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 Carson's 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 Carson's work differ from more traditional forms of poetry? Is it troubling or is it liberating that she doesn't 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 Carson's 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?


"This book is amazing--I haven't 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 group's 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, "There's good reason that Carson's 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).


5 1

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
timkjazz , September 19, 2006
Having just come to Anne Carson in a big way due to a poet friend who swears by her, I was ready to be amazed. And I was. Her language in re-telling the tale of the slain monster Geryon, her deadpan humor, her references to the classics we read as children and have mostly forgotten, awakened in me a sense of childhood awe at her staggering talent. Fusing poetry, the novel, essay and autobiography seamlessly in 'Autobiography of Red' (which I just finished one hour ago), Carson has leapt to the forefront of poets in my estimation. Alienation, sadness, betrayal, they all hold sway over the winged creature/boy/man Geryon and his struggle to be whole/real. I am a convert. Anne Carson is a blazingly original talent and in this world of predictable poetry what could be higher praise? Read her and delight in the elasticity of literature in its highest form: poetry.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(24 of 44 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment




Product Details

ISBN:
9780375701290
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
07/27/1999
Publisher:
BALLANTINE BOOKS
Series info:
Vintage Contemporaries
Pages:
160
Height:
.50IN
Width:
5.10IN
Thickness:
.50
Series:
Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback)
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1999
Series Volume:
2280
Author:
Anne Carson
Author:
Anne Carson
Author:
Anne Carson
Subject:
Heracles
Subject:
Monsters
Subject:
Poetry (poetic works by one author)
Subject:
Anthologies-Miscellaneous International Poetry
Subject:
Epic poetry, Greek

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$16.00
New Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
10Burnside
2Cedar Hills
1Hawthorne
20Local Warehouse
20Remote Warehouse
Used Book Alert for book Receive an email when this ISBN is available used.
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2021 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##