60 for 60: Autobiography of Red

By Natalie Bevilacqua

In 1994, Columbia Journal published an early rendition of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red before the piece found its form as a novel-in-verse and was published four years later by Alfred A. Knopf with great praise. This story provides an invaluable window into Carson’s process. As a writer and a fairly indecisive one at that, I’m fascinated by where stories begin—as little specks in a writer’s mind to be swept together and arranged into coherence on the page—and where stories end up, often a distance away from their starting points.

In a footnote on the first page that defines the protagonist Geryon as a nemesis of Herakles, Carson says, “Geryon was all red with wings. This must have been hard for a lad (I thought) and so I wrote about it.” A reevaluation of one deemed bad and monstrous gives itself over every time to the empathy of the writer-poet-artist. After all, there’s a story in every character, and it’s the job of the writer-poet-artist to coax it out. Even in the overcommercialized world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, villain origin stories have taken hold, opening new dimensions in the sources that complicate the audience’s prior notions. “Autobiography of Red” in our twenty-second issue is what happens when we allow an archetype to step out of a two-dimensional characterization and into the throes of humanity.