In my short life I have learned that short novels need to be read for as long as they can be. Then the good ones should be reread. This is a challenge. These short novels masquerade themselves as something that you can appreciate in a few hours of reading. Yes, you can read The Lover in an afternoon, or The Hour of the Star in a few hours on a park bench with a good coffee in hand, or you can sit with The Crying of Lot 49 one Tuesday evening and get through it all. If you have the ability to han...

It was taking him a very long whileto set up the camera. Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his handseach time he tried to move them. Every so often my education comes in handy when I am confronted by a piece that does not seize me by the heart and wring it till I weep like it has apparently done for most everyone else. One could say peer pressure, or one could admit to capitalism and how a measure of discipline is needed in analyzing any work that is mandated, regardless of perso

Disclaimer: I use footnotes in this review, and I'm sorry. I definitely wasn't trying to be clever or academic, but I found the many points of connection difficult to discuss without going on a hundred different tangents. So my apologies beforehand, but I couldn't find another way.Not long ago I read an interview with Marcel Duchamp and, as someone who didn't know much about him, what struck me most was how good he was at titling his art. He called one "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,

“Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.”Anne Carson ~~ Autobiography of RedAnne Carson’s Autobiography Of Red took my breath away. I don't think I've felt this way about a book since I first discovered Virginia Woolf. I was stunned by Carson's poetic novel.Autobiography Of Red is packed with so many emotions, perhaps the most glaring is Geryon ~~ the protagonist’s ~~ continual struggle with loneliness and loss ~~ something I can relate to all to well. From an early age, Geryon must deal wit...

I really loved the translated section of this—I think Anne Carson has a way of conveying thoughts and feelings that is impressive to say the least. I do not know if I can say the rest of this resonated with me. I began very much loving this, but the second half meanders, never really coming to any kind of release for me—and I didn’t find what was in between quite good enough to ignore that. The language is very beautiful. The story in outline is brilliant. I felt it never built to the release I

This novel was written for me, it feels. It has the perfect blend of funny and sad, raw and elegant, intellectual and sensual. It blew my mind when I read it. And it's the one of only two books I've re-read several times (Great Expectations being the other.)There are some clever metafictional framing sections which come at the material from historical and literary angles, but the central section, the heart of the book, is the story, the novel in verse. "Verse" in Anne Carson isn't strident metri...

Oh, you should read this book. It's smart and sweet and tender and original. It's erotic, but just under your skin. It's a novel in verse, but don't let that deter you. You can pick it up off the shelf and settle into a big armchair in the bookstore and read the whole thing for free in an hour (even relishing and re-reading parts). But then you'll probably want to buy it anyway so that you can take it home and sleep with it under your pillow for the rest of your life.

An arresting novel-in-verse about art, desire, and abuse, Autobiography of Red blurs the line between the mythic and the mundane. The work charts the brief life of a marginal figure from classical myth: Geryon, the red-winged monster slain by Hercules as part of his tenth labour. In plain verse, Carson invents a modern, tragic backstory for Geryon, framing him as an abused child who, as an adult, becomes a sensitive photographer and the much-wronged lover of Hercules. Across dozens of fast-movin...

If this is poetry, then I guess I don't really understandwhat poetry is. If it's not about rhyme, or meter, sound, or the controlled use of precise, flowing, poetic language, then it seems to resemble prose exactly, but with arbitraryline-breaks,which does not preclude it from being a beautiful storyabout heartbreak,and growing up, one that is deeply moving, and filled with powerfulimagery, just that I felt distracted by the form, driven to constantly questionwhy it is written in this way: perha...

if you no like this book, i no like you

Sometimes I read a work that is so complete that I don't want to write a review. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson is that kind of book.A retelling of the story of Geryon, a red-winged monster who has a short but painful affair with Heracles that reverberates through his life.What struck me was Geryon's unending effort to make art out of his life-first through writing, even as a child before he could actually write, and then as a photographer. Geryon's life is painful but he constantly searche...

i finished this around midnight and held off on rating or reviewing it until now because i couldn't decide how i felt about the experience. i've been hovering between 3 and 4 stars, even after reading a few autobiography of red examinations/reviews in search of further clarity. ultimately i'm settling on four stars because, upon finishing, i'd already made up my mind about keeping my physical copy (the implication being that i knew i was going to want to revisit the story, or language, or format...

Not in a long time have I obsessively read anything, just to want to obsessively re-read it all in one fell swoop. There's two parts to this book: first is the meta-writing bit--poem fragments and the like from the original Hercules myth, a writer who goes blind for insulting Helen, and then regains his sight again for rescinding his comment (how very political) and the like. This part is good (not great--just good).It's the story itself that is absolutely wonderful. Anne Carson is good at many