User:Sammielh/sandbox/Lucy Elmina Anthony

Autobiography of Red is a 1998 verse novel by Canadian author Anne Carson. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, the work reimagines the plot of the fragmentary poem Geryoneis, by Greek author Stesichorus, which recounts the Tenth Labor of Heracles, in which he kills the red, winged monster known as Geryon to steal his cattle. In the novel, Carson imagines Geryon as a winged gay teenager living in the present day who falls in love with a rebellious boy named Heracles, who breaks his heart.

The novel is considered one of Carson's best works and originally brought her [fame]. It is considered one of the most complex characterizations of an LGBT character in contemporary Anglo-Saxon literature. Among the main themes it addresses are lost love, the image of the artist as a monstrous being, and the role of translations. In 2013, Carson published a sequel to the work entitled Red Doc> in which she continues the story of Geryon and Heracles, and employs a similar poetic style.

Plot
Geryon is a little boy who, at least in a metaphorical sense, is the Greek monster Geryon. He lives on an Atlantic island with his family. Sexually abused by his older brother, his affectionate mother too weak-willed to protect him, the monstrous young boy finds solace in photography and begins to write his autobiography. When he is 14, he meets a boy two years older than him, Herakles, with whom he falls deeply in love. Herakles and Geryon begin a love affair and some time later travel to Hades, Herakles' hometown, which was on the other side of the island. They stay with Herakles' grandmother, who shows them a photograph of a volcano that had erupted in 1923 and destroyed the village. Days later, at the peak of Geryon's infatuation, Herakles ends the relationship with Geryon and sends him back home, leaving him devastated.

When he reaches the age of 22, Geryon takes a trip to Buenos Aires, where he attends a philosophy congress and visits a tango bar. The next day he meets by chance Herakles, who had come to Buenos Aires with Ancash, his new boyfriend, to record volcano sounds for a documentary about Emily Dickinson. Geryon sees the feelings he had for Herakles revived and becomes jealous of Ancash. Days later, the three meet and, after Herakles steals a wooden tiger from a carousel, they agree to travel together to Peru, Ancash's home country. During the plane ride, Geryon lays his head on Herakles' shoulder, who slyly begins to masturbate him while Ancash is asleep.

Once they arrive in Lima they spend the night with Ancash's mother, who was originally from a city called Huaraz. Ancash discovers Geryon's wings and is amazed by them. He then tells him the legend of the "Yazcol Yazcamac", men who were thrown into a volcano in a town called Jucu, north of Huaraz, and who were resurrected with red skin and wings when they left their weaknesses and mortality behind. The next day they decide to travel to Huaraz. One night during the journey, Geryon and Herakles have sex, but Geryon cries when he realizes that Herakles is not the same man he loved in his adolescence.The next morning, Ancash strikes Geryon and asks him if he still loves Heracles, to which he replies that he loved the Herakles of the past. After Ancash asks to see him fly, Geryon takes his tape recorder in the early morning and flies to the volcano of Jucu while recording its sounds. In the last chapter of the novel, Geryon, Herakles and Ancash walk the streets of Jucu and watch the volcano fire.

Primary characters
Geryon is the protagonist of the story, a gay teenager with wings, shy and melancholic character. From an early age he feels a propensity for art, first by writing an autobiography in which he imagines his death in a form similar to the original Greek myth, later through photography. When he meets Heracles he falls intensely in love with him. Unlike the literal murder that takes place in the Greek myth, the novel's Geryon has a metaphorical death, which occurs when Heracles breaks his heart. During the years following his disappointment in love he lives depressed and finds an escape in photography, until he is later reunited with Heracles. To prevent people from seeing his wings he hides them under his jacket, but it is later revealed to him that the red and winged people were those who had survived the fire of the volcanoes.

Herakles is a rebellious, burly, egotistical and charismatic boy, two years older than Geryon and self-described as "someone who will never be satisfied". They meet in chapter seven, when Heracles was sixteen and arrives on a bus from New Mexico. They soon become lovers and Heracles takes the more sexual and dominant role in the relationship. After a trip to his grandmother's house, Heracles breaks up with Geryon and sends him back home. Years later they meet again in Buenos Aires, where Heracles had gone with her new boyfriend, Ancash.

Ancash is Heracles' new boyfriend, of Peruvian origin. He meets Geryon during his stay in Buenos Aires with Heracles; then the three of them decide to travel to Peru. Ancash is the only character who talks about Geryon's wings and upon discovering them reveals that Geryon belonged to a race of holy men known as "Yazcol Yazcamac". When he learns that Geryon had sex with Herakles, he beats him, but then they talk and when Geryon admits that the one he loved was the Herakles of the past, Ancash tells him that he wished to see him wear his wings.

Geryon's brother mistreats Geryon since they are children, calls him stupid and refuses to take him to his classroom at school. One night when Geryon sleeps over in his room, he sexually abuses him, a situation that is repeated for a long time and in which his brother gives Geryon marbles as a form of compensation. Years later he starts working as a sports commentator in a radio station. In the Greek mythological genealogy, as narrated in Hesiod's Theogony, Geryon does not have a brother, but he does have a sister, Echidna, mother of some of the most famous monsters in mythology.

Structure and style
The original idea for the work grew out of Carson's interest in the story of Geryon in Stesichorus' Geryoneis, particularly the character's monstrosity. Carson began to translate the surviving fragments of the poem out of interest, but was frustrated by her inability to convey the aspects of the story that most appealed to her, because of the limitations of translating Greek to English and the lack of context created by the fragmentary nature of the work. This led her to decide to rewrite the myth in the form of a novel. Early versions of the work were written entirely in prose, but she began to experiment a bit with the form and tried an alternation of long and short verse, which she eventually adopted for the final version. According to Carson, she decided to turn Geryon and Herakles into lovers because of her interest in the way various homoerotic references are incorporated in classical Greek works, such as the Iliad.

The work is divided into seven parts: two introductions, three appendices, the novel itself and an epilogue. The introductions are called "Red Flesh". The first of these talks about the nature of adjectives and the inclination of Stesychorus to focus on the interiority of the characters, a propensity that Carson supports and that, according to her, differentiates him from the epic tales of Homer. The second introduction brings together the surviving fragments of the Gerioneida, translated and arranged by the author. In the three appendices, Carson treats with a tone that parodies academic discourse the blindness of Stesychorus, supposedly provoked by Helen of Troy, and the poet's attempts to atone. The epilogue, meanwhile, depicts a fictitious interview by Carson with Stesychorus.

The concluding section of the novel, entitled "Autobiography of Red: A Romance," has about 13,000 verses divided into 47 chapters, each one to seven pages long, and tells the story in the third person chronologically. The chapters have short names, often only one word, and are written in a lyrical narrative style alternating long and short verses without rhyme. According to poet Elizabeth Macklin, the verses give the text a kind of supplementary punctuation and help to generate emphasis. Six of the last seven chapters of the work include the word "Photographs" in their title and describe photos included in Geryon's autobiography. The exception is the final chapter, entitled "The flashes in which a man possesses himself".

Monstrosity of Geryon
Autobiography of Red explores the childhood and youth of Geryon, who is described as a red monster with wings, and his response to finding himself rejected by others because of his monstrous characteristics. Carson's humanization of Geryon is part of a trend in recent centuries in literature that has sought to revalue the role of the "monster" beyond its traditional role as an obstacle of a heroic figure. The case of Geryon is noteworthy because Stesychorus himself had already made a first effort to humanize his figure by recounting the events from his perspective in the Gerioneida. The ambivalent representation of Geryon is precisely the reason why figures such as Dante Alighieri have shown him as the "personification of deceit," with a body in which human parts and animal parts were mixed. In the novel, Carson goes further than Stesychorus and reverses the protagonist and antagonist roles of Herakles and Geryon by showing the latter as a victim of violence despite his identity as a monster.

One of the first characterisations of the protagonist in the text states that: "Geryon was a monster, everything about him was red". The importance of the color red in the work lies in its character as a metaphor for the monstrosity of Geryon, the main characteristic that leads him to be rejected. The exact meaning of red has been explored by several scholars. Among the interpretations of what it symbolizes in Geryon are: his interiority, his creativity and his inner strength. According to the professor Dina Georgi, Geryon's wings represent the physical mark of everything that makes him feel vulnerable and different from others, particularly his homosexuality. This is reflected in the novel in his attempts to hide his wings from others, fearing that his presence will arouse hatred and rejection.

Although throughout most of the book Geryon's wings and red color are not mentioned by any other character, their presence is literal and not metaphorical. Although the lack of mention could be explained by Geryon's attempts to hide his wings under jackets, it is peculiar that even Heracles does not mention them at times when their presence would be obvious, such as when they were having sex. However, the wings later provoke a rather realistic reaction when they are seen by Ancash, Heracles' new boyfriend. Also, near the end of the play, Geryon once uses his wings to fly.

Carson is explicit in narrating how his monstrous features, rather than being a sign of his dangerousness, are the marks that lead to his being ostracized. As a child, Geryon feels ostracized by the rest of his schoolmates and is mistreated by his brother, which leads him to isolate himself from the outside. When his brother begins to sexually abuse him, one of the tactics he uses to keep him silent is to threaten to tell at home how "nobody [likes him] at school."

Geryon's constant questioning of himself later leads him to ask, "Who can blame a monster for being red?" as a statement of rejection of the classical narrative of the monster's role, which Geryon refuses to embody. At the end of the novel, Geryon finally frees himself from the bonds imposed on him by his monstrosity without having to reject this part of his identity, but rather accepting it as an integral part of himself that he need not be ashamed of or feel guilty about. Once he discovers his relationship with the "Yazcol Yazcamac", Geryon flies into the crater of a volcano and emerges as a heroic figure, still with his characteristics that defined him as a monster, but having left behind his insecurities.

Trauma and art
In considering the abuse Geryon suffers as a child and the pain of his breakup with Heracles, the novel can also be interpreted as a story of survival of trauma through art. From a young age, Geryon develops in an environment in which unequal power relations are entwined with sexual desire. This occurs in his relationship with Heracles, but long before that also with his older brother, who from the beginning of the play mistreats him and exerts the dominant role in their interactions. This later devolves into the sexual abuse that Geryon suffers at the hands of his brother, based on an "economy of sex" in exchange for marbles. The difference between the power position of the two is exemplified when his brother asks him for his favorite weapon, to which Geryon replies a cage. The answer is ridiculed by his brother, since, from his dominant position, every weapon had to fulfill an active role and he could not conceive that for Geryon the best weapon was something to protect himself.

The sexual abuse also leads Geryon to see his own interiority as the only refuge from his brother's abuse. This escape in search of safety manifests itself through the writing of his autobiography, where he decides to write "all things interior" and "omit all things exterior." He also attempts to express himself through a sculpture of himself in which he attaches a cigarette and a ten-dollar bill to a tomato, an object markedly red and devoid of agency. According to professor Geordie Miller, this bill represents an attempt by Geryon to communicate to his mother the abuse he was subjected to, since the day after his brother raped him for the first time, she gave him a dollar bill as a form of compensation.

When his teacher forces him to change the tragic ending of his autobiography, Geryon imagines a world where "beautiful red breezes blew from hand to hand". This image represents the idea of a liberated Geryon who could move through the world without his individuality being a feature that would generate rejection. According to Miller, the demand to change his text to an authority figure echoes the palynody written by Stesychorus himself to supposedly appease the wrath of Helen of Troy.

Geryon's artistic evolution subsequently takes a new direction. When language becomes insufficient to express his experience, he decides to start taking pictures. Geryon's fascination with photography is born when Herakles' grandmother shows him a photo entitled "Red Patience," which showed the eruption of a volcano captured on the basis of a fifteen-minute exposure. By the time Heracles ends the relationship with Geryon, the autobiography he had been writing since childhood had been transformed into a "photographic essay". Through photography, Geryon attempts to capture fragments of his own identity that could not be expressed in the written entries of his autobiography. An example of this is the photograph he titles "Jealous of my little sensations," which shows a red rabbit tied with a white ribbon while laughing. According to the professor Rachell Mindell, the emotion expressed in the photo stems from the vulnerability he feels in his relationship with Herakles, which is about to end, as well as Geryon's own vision of himself, expressed in a bound animal. The depression in the face of separation is expressed later in another photograph, entitled "If he sleeps he will do well".

Relationship with Herakles
Other central themes that stand out in Autobiography of Red are erotic desire, romantic love and the pain of abandonment in the face of a love breakup. These have been Carson's obsessions throughout her literary career, with an interest in love affairs present since her work Eros Sweet and Bitter (1986), where she discusses Greek romantic poetry based on her doctoral dissertation in classical studies. The change of focus towards the exploration of pain after a love breakup occurred in 1995 in his poems La antropología del agua and El ensayo de cristal, which can be considered direct ancestors of Autobiografía de Rojo. In the case of La antropología de agua, in addition to the theme of love separation, other similarities with the work are: the use of a similar style, the use of language and even the incorporation of a succession of photographs.

The moment when Geryon meets Herakles is described with great poetic intensity to mark the impact the event has on the protagonist's life. "They were two top eels at the bottom of the tank and recognized each other as if they were cursive letters," Carson writes of Geryon's infatuation. The event also marks a break in his family interactions, as his mother's former role in his life shifts entirely to Heracles, a dynamic narrated in a chapter appropriately titled "Change." In general, love leads Geryon to isolate himself further and to give himself up for the sake of his mother.

Heracles, on the other hand, is shown as an active and uncomplicated boy who only seeks to have fun and get pleasure. In this sense he has some similarities with Geryon's brother and their relationship could be understood as a transference of that ancient dynamic of subjugation. Herakles even describes himself on one occasion as a "tamer of monsters," in reference to Geryon. Another aspect of the relationship is that Herakles never reciprocates the same level of love that Geryon feels for him and on several occasions admonishes him for his sensitivity. "I hate it when you cry... Can't you just fuck and not think?" he claims to him during one night. In a more fundamental sense, Herakles and Geryon conceive of two different ways of understanding a relationship. While Geryon seeks to be dominated and persuaded, Heracles sees love as an adventure to be conquered.

Heracles' inability to understand Geryon's perspective is expressed in his failure to see him as he is, for, although from the beginning of the novel the color red has represented Geryon's interiority, Heracles imagines Geryon in his dreams as yellow. However, Heracles is not the only one who deludes himself, for even when it becomes clear that their relationship is about to end, Geryon refuses to accept it. This is reflected in a conversation in which Heracles points out to him that the stars he saw in the sky were already dead and that what he saw were only "memories". However, Geryon refuses to acknowledge this and prefers to live in the memory of the love between the two rather than accept the separation.

At the moment of ending the relationship with Geryon, Herakles tells him that he was doing so because they were "true friends" and that is why he wanted to "see him free," to which Geryon replies in his mind "I don't want to be free, I want to be with you," as a rejection of Herakles' attitude of refusing to acknowledge his pain. Beyond that, Geryon's rejection of the idea of seeking freedom and his preference for seeing himself as a recluse receive several references in the novel as part of his characterization during childhood and adolescence. In addition to the reference to the "cage" when his brother asks him about his favorite weapon and the picture of the red rabbit tied by a white ribbon, several descriptions of his emotional state speak of feeling "packed in himself" or like a "locked box." Heracles himself tells him on one occasion, before they had finished, that he was depressed by the fact that all his drawings were about captivity, after Geryon wrote a graffiti that read "SLAVE LOVE".

Heracles' abandonment leaves Geryon devastated for years and plunges him into a mourning for his lost love from which he does not try to escape, but searches within himself for an escape while the pain continues to consume him. Photography is once again the method in which he expresses his emotions, in this case through a fifteen-minute exposure shot of a fly drowning in a bucket of rain, which he titles "If you sleep you will do well". The choice of the fly is important because shortly before Geryon had described himself as being "as weak as a fly". However, despite the pain he feels, the separation gives Geryon the opportunity to feel at peace and he subsequently finds in his autobiography a reason to continue.

Years later, when he meets Heracles again in Buenos Aires, Geryon feels his desire for him awaken. However, when they subsequently have sex, Geryon begins to weep as he imagines telling her, "Long ago I loved you, now I no longer know who you are," and meditates on how two people can be together, yet feel apart. Geryon's realization lies in his finally understanding that the love he felt could not survive indefinitely or prevent Herakles from ceasing to represent the adolescent idealization that existed in his mind. In a profound sense, Geryon understands that he and Herakles had never been compatible nor could they have formed the kind of union that Geryon dreamed of. When Ancash claims Geryon for having sex with Heracles and asks if he still loved him, Geryon reinforces this realization by confessing that "In my dreams I love him (...) dreams of days gone by." This allows Geryon to finally leave Herakles behind.

Volcano and maturity
Throughout the novel, Geryon undertakes a process of evolution as a character that allows him to find himself and assimilate the situations he has experienced in his life. According to scholar Hsiao-chen Chien, this construction of his identity has a close relationship with the image of volcanoes in the text. From the time of his relationship with Heracles, volcanoes hold a strong symbolic charge as a representation of Geryon's inner passions. The birth of sexual desire is described as a "fire [that] writhed within him," while, after Heracles leaves him, Geryon feels how "flames licked along the floorboards of his interior" and "his heart and lungs turned into a black crust." The love breakup also represents a turning point in his development and gives way for him to begin to explore his identity.

Geryon's inner conflict is represented by his wings, which make him uncomfortable every time he tries to hide them and which he keeps trying to deny, as a metaphor for his unresolved struggle to accept himself. His wings represent freedom, but Geryon is not yet ready to use them. Throughout the novel, Geryon constantly tries to hide his wings from others as a symbol of his differences. The only time he lets them free is when he is alone, as in the moment when he takes his first self-portrait, which he titles "No Tail!" and in which he is shown lying on the bed in a fetal position while he unfolds his wings in all their majesty and the text compares them to a continent. For the rest of the time, however, Geryon prefers to keep his mythical grandeur hidden from the world.

When he arrives in Peru, Geryon learns from Ancash that his red color and wings were proof that he was related to the "Yazcol Yazcamac," wise men who descended into a volcano near Huaraz and returned cleansed of all weakness. This revelation gives Geryon a new mythological identity and purpose, distinct from his role as a subordinate character in the story of Herakles. In the penultimate chapter of the novel, entitled "Photographs: #1748," Geryon fulfills this role and flies into the volcano of legend, marking the moment when he reaches adult maturity and accepts the characteristics that make him unique. The name of this chapter refers to a poem by Emily Dickinson that talks about a volcano and ends with the lines: "The only secret that people keep / is immortality". At the end of the novel, Geryon, Ancash and Herakles wear their faces with this "immortality", while Geryon meditates in silence: "We are wonderful beings, we are neighbors of fire".

Reception
The work was well received critically and brought Carson literary fame. The Guardian review, written by poet John Kinsella, hailed the work and described it as "one of the best volumes of poetry in the English language in the last decade". Among the aspects it highlighted was the intertextual confluence of myth, popular culture, commentary on sexuality and theory, which Kinsella praised as "greatly accomplished." Jeffery Beam, in an Oyster Boy Review article, also applauded the novel and characterized it as "cinematic" and "Homeric in its originality." He particularly praised the exploration of Geryon's romantic desires and references to classical texts.

In an article published on the website Vulture, American journalist Kathryn Schulz stated that Autobiography of Red was a "very strange, very clever, intermittently funny and ridiculously beautiful" work, and focused on its character as a learning novel about the evolution of the character of Geryon from childhood to adulthood. The poet and professor Ruth Padel, in a review written for The New York Times, referred to the work as a "profound love story" and highlighted the mixture of witty and poetic tone, as well as Carson's prose, which she described as "sensual and funny, moving, musical and tender, brilliantly illuminated". The play's style was also praised in the review in the critical magazine Kirkus Reviews, which characterized it as innovative.

Poet Mark Halliday, in the Chicago Review, was more ambivalent in his assessment. Among the aspects he criticized were the quality of the work's versification and the length of the work, which he claimed seemed to have been "fanatically extended." He also floated the theory that Geryon was an alter ego of the author herself, which, according to Halliday, would make the character's homosexuality a sort of appropriation by Carson. Jacket magazine's review was also lukewarm. Although it called the book's beginning promising and praised Carson's "pithy lyricism," it asserted that the narrative became dull and that its central theme of amorous rejection had been better addressed by Carson in earlier works.

Among the accolades she has received are the A. M. Klein Award for Poetry from the Quebec Writers' Federation, which she won in its 1998 edition, and a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award. [a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize]

Autobiography of Red was warmly received by authors and critics, with highly positive reviews from Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Susan Sontag, among others. The book also sold unusually well for literary poetry, with at least 25,000 copies sold by the year 2000, two years after its publication. It was described as "one of the crossover classics of contemporary poetry: poetry that can seduce even people who don't like poetry" and Carson herself as "that rarest of rare things, a bestselling poet."

The book was referenced, alongside Carson's previous work Eros the Bittersweet, in a 2004 episode of The L Word.