Ann Carson

Autobiography of Red

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This novel in verse is preceded by origin story-like meta commentary about Homer—whom the narrator describes as having locked nouns and verbs into a rigid code, thereby creating a narrow definition of reality—and the Greek poet Stesichoros who “began to undo the latches” of Homer’s code. The remainder of the novel consists of randomly retrieved scraps of Stesichoros’s verse, which tell the story of the “monster” Geryon, who is abused by family members and falls hopelessly in love with a man who eventually rebuffs him. Stesichoros’s (Carson’s) allusions and linguistic associations draw the reader into an unprecedented literary reality. Her inventive word fusions “release being [... so that all] the substances in the world [ … float] up” to conjure Geryon’s astonishingly beautiful and deeply tragic story.