Autobiography Of Red

"Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster?"

Carson's translation of Stesichoros's fragment presents a question which Carson's version of Geryon seems to be asking without articulating. Geryon seems to be the only literal supernatural being in his world, but he seems to feel as though he is also, apart from his physicality, an abhorrent being. Before Ancash tells him about the legend of the red people who survive being thrown into the volcano, Geryon never encounters another monster like himself. 

"Either Stesichoros was a blind man or he was not." 

Carson's inclusion of this section demonstrates the resistance of truth to fixity. Because it's based on a supernatural legend, Stesichoros' blindness can be neither proven nor disproven. However, the truth of the legend doesn't seem to matter in thematic terms for Carson's book. 

"The reticent volcano keeps/His never slumbering plan—/Confided are his projects pink/To no precarious man" 

This poem by Emily Dickinson introduces the recurrent theme of internal turmoil versus exterior stolidity, which Geryon learns to cultivate as a coping mechanism after suffering sexual abuse. This poem also provides Ancash and Herakles with the title for their feature film on volcanoes. 

"Once she said the meaning it would stay." 

From childhood, Geryon develops an interest in learning facts, such as definitions, statistics, and the time. Before his abuse, Geryon trusts in fixed meaning, especially those given to him by his mother. Afterwards, though, Geryon becomes more skeptical and, as an adult, begins to consider skepticism.

"Inside is mine, he thought." 

After Geryon's brother abuses him for the first time, Geryon realizes that though things are happening to his body, only he has access to his mind. He steels himself against the abuse by making an inward turn. 

"I don't trust people who only move around at night." 

Geryon's mother says this about Herakles, with whom Geryon meets each night during Geryon’s high school years. Later, Geryon will become a person who feels most comfortable 'moving around' at night, without the visibility that daylight provides. 

"A photograph that has compressed on its motionless surface fifteen different moments of time, nine hundred seconds of bombs moving up and ash moving down and pines in the kill process." 

With "Red Patience," Geryon becomes interested in long-exposure photography that captures multiple moments in a single image. The process creates a blurred image, which appeals to Geryon's preference for documenting his life in the liminal space between being awake and asleep. The volcano photo also shows the destruction that occurs when something empties itself onto its surroundings. 

"All your designs are about captivity, it depresses me." 

Herakles wishes that Geryon could experience the feeling of freedom he does, in terms of his thoughts, feelings, and sexuality. Herakles lacks the empathy necessary for understanding Geryon's reasons for obsession with containment, including the abuse he suffered and his shame over being a red-winged monster.

"This was when Geryon liked to plan his autobiography, in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul." 

While awake, Geryon does not allow these emotional intake valves to open, although he desires the insights they bring. After giving up on the fixity of being, Geryon opens himself to the possibility of a manifold way of being that would free him from being relegated to monsterdom. 

"Question is how they use it—given the limits of the form." 

Geryon's grandmother says this to Geryon regarding the silence of photography. She argues that photographs aren't silent and have the ability to communicate within their silence, much as Geryon did when he stopped speaking. 

"Years passed as his eyes ran water and a thousand ideas jumped his brain—If the world ends now I am free and if the world ends now no one will see my autobiography—finally it bumped."

Geryon has these thoughts after Herakles breaks up with him. Geryon simultaneously longs for freedom from his earthly nature, and wants to continue with his project of identity-formation. 

"Yellow? said Geryon and he was thinking Yellow! Yellow! Even in his dreams he doesn't know me at all!" 

When Herakles calls Geryon after their break-up, he tries to resume their friendship as though nothing has happened between them, but Geryon, for the first time, sees that perhaps Herakles, with whom he'd been so taken, doesn't know him at all. 

"How people get power over one another, this mystery."

On his plane trip to Argentina, he considers the 'mystery' of power dynamics. Despite being abused and bullied by his older brother, Geryon maintains a relationship with him. Despite feeling hurt and perhaps used by Herakles, Geryon still wants to be with him. He seems to conclude that the person with the stronger literal or metaphorical weapon, whatever that may be, will gain power over the other. 

"It was not the fear of ridicule, to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life, but this blank desertion of his own mind that threw him into despair." 

For Geryon, it's not having a fixed identity (that of a monster) that bothers him, but the idea that he may not have a fixed identity, or that he could have a self-made identity. This existential fear, nascent in childhood, becomes a full-fledged crisis in his adult life as Geryon struggles to identify himself.

"Provided you can renounce—he stood—that rather fundamental human trait—he raised both arms as if to alert a ship at sea—the desire to know." 

The philosophy professor Geryon meets at Café Mitwelt introduces the idea that the only way to truth is to relinquish the desire for knowledge. Geryon replies that he thinks he can do that, though it doesn't seem that he actually can. 

"Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of the whales afloat in the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall—as alive as he was on the terrible slopes of time." 

As a boy, Geryon's class visits a pair of recently captured beluga whales and their captivity comes to both haunt Geryon and serve as an emblem of his anxiety about containment and time. He often asks others for their thoughtson the whales, and on time, as though some external knowledge could finally provide him with the understanding he's spent his life seeking. 

"Perhaps soon I will get some new information about red." 

During the philosophy professor's lecture on skepticism, Geryon comes to understand that adjectives attached to objects may have less meaning than humans tend to assign them. He hopes that this knowledge will help him understand more about the adjective assigned to himself. 

"You can't be alive and think about nothing." 

Geryon says this to the tango singer when she claims that the beluga whales in the tank don't have thoughts, an assertion with which Geryon disagrees. For Geryon, a being can't exist without considering its own nature, as he has for his whole existence. However, this conversation makes clear that some beings, particularly people, like the tango singer, may take their existence for granted and accept it without thinking about it. 

"I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it." 

In his life, Geryon realizes that not everyone sees things the same way. His readings in philosophy confirm this. However, he also learns, through living and reading, that these differences in perception should not be denied to spare feelings. Rather, they should be explored and questioned. 

"They do have a language, Ancash was saying." 

Ancash refers here to volcanoes, though the same seems to be said about monsters, like Geryon. Not every language is verbal or written. As Geryon's mother explains to her friend, even though Geryon isn't old enough to write, he expresses himself in his autobiography with his own languages: sculpture and photography. 

"I'm a master of monsters, aren't I?" 

Herakles says this in jest, though it's unclear if he's aware of his comment's full implications. When, as a younger man, he engaged Geryon (a minor) in a relationship, Herakles, as the older boy, held a kind of power over Geryon, making him, in a real way, Geryon's 'master.' This comment also speaks to the way Herakles makes Geryon feel as though he can't escape Herakles, physically nor emotionally. 

"Desire is no light thing." 

It's Geryon's desire to be with Herakles, though he knows that the relationship is unhealthy in some way, that sets Geryon thinking about himself. The desire Geryon feels towards Herakles holds him captive, just as his identity as a red-winged monster does. 

"Can't you ever just fuck and not think?" 

Herakles asks Geryon this after they have sex for the first time since breaking up and Geryon begins to cry. This display of emotion proves too much for Herakles and he asks Geryon, as he always has, to get out of his own head and enjoy the pleasures of the body, as Herakles so easily can.