"Yikes!"...Anne Carson

According to her agent, "Yikes," was her first word on hearing she'd won the Nobel Prize. More decorous than Doris Lessing's first words on the same sort of occasion...

Autobiography of Red (1998) is a verse novel about Geryon, the red winged cattle-herder slain by Herakles as the tenth of his twelve labors. The story was alluded to in the usual places: Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book IX about Herakles, or Hesiod's Theogony, but it was retold from Geryon's point of view by the poet Stesichoros (c. 630 - c. 555 BCE) in his Geryoneis, now mostly lost. It's this version that Carson retells, expands, and adapts.

She begins with a short essay on Stesichoros. "He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet." Then come her tranlations of the fragments of Stesichoros that come from the Geryoneis:

XI. Right

Are there many little boys who think they are a

Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the

Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him

Joyfully

 

That's already less translation than adaptation, though there is a dog Geryon is fond of in the Geryoneis.

Then a few short 'appendices' about Stesichoros, mainly his more famous (but also largely lost) poems about Helen, culminating in the Palinode.

The main story is moved from archaic times to the present. It's told in 48 episodes.  

 

In the first couple of episodes, we've already learned Geryon doesn't like going to school:

 

V. Screendoor

 

His mother stood at the ironing board lighting a cigarette and regarding Geryon. 

---

Outside the dark pink air

was already hot and live with cries. Time to go to school, she said for the third time.

Her cool voice floated

over a pile of fresh tea towels and across the shadowy kitchen to where Geryon stood at the screen door

He would remember when he was past forty the almost dusty medieval smell of the screen itself as it

pressed its grid on to his face. She was behind him now. This would be hard if you were weak

but you're not weak, she said and neatened his little red wings and pushed him out the door.

 

That was picked a bit at random as an example, though it is one of the shorter episodes. They all work that way, with a single sentence to open, followed by an anecdote.

 

Geryon becomes a troubled gay teenager. His mother is roughly sympathetic; his older brother has no patience for him. He meets Herakles, with whom he has sex. "Geryon you know we'll always be friends." Not so in the original. He and Herakles travel to South America to see a volcano: 

We are amazing beings,

Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.

And now time is rushing towards them

where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,

night at their back.

 

That ends the main part of the story--Herakles has not killed Geryon--though there's a final interview with Stesichorus.

 

I was just writing about her later work Nox the other day and mentioned she was in the hunt for this year's Nobel Prize. I honestly didn't think she would win, but I'm pleased she did. (If I'd put a fiver on her at 33-1 I could have had a nice dinner out to celebrate...) I opined the other day that Autobiography of Red would be a good place to start with Carson, and having just reread it, I still think that's true, though she's written a lot of good books, notably Eros the Bittersweet or Nox.

  

September Wrapup

I've been reading plenty, but not blogging much. Oh, well... Here was my month's reading:

Thrillers

Hammond Innes/The Trojan Horse

Brits dueling with Huns in World War II. A great one, I thought. More here. 

E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation

Brits dueling Huns in World War I. I was under the impression this was one of the greats, but just so-so for me. The politics are, of course, archaic, but I was expecting that. Maybe I read too many mysteries/thrillers/spy novels, but I also saw the final surprise twist a mile away.

My first Oppenheim. And I really wanted to like this one better because of the great George Starbuck poem:

Said

Agatha Christie to

E. Philips Oppenheim,

"Who is this Hemingway,

Who is this Proust?

 

Who is this Vladimir

Whatchamacallum, this

Neopostrealist

Rabble?" she groused.

 

Prydain

 

Lloyd Alexander/Taran Wanderer

Lloyd Alexander/The High King

Lloyd Alexander/The Foundling and Other Tales

Prydain is a disguised Wales. High fantasy for a younger audience. The High King completed the series of five and won the 1969 Newbery Medal; the stories came after. (I read the first three novels in the series earlier.) Based on Welsh mythology, with a strong dash of Tolkien, of coure; Taran is assistant pig-keeper for the oracular pig Hen Wen. He fights evil in the form of sorceresses, undead, and a dark king. Pretty fun stuff, with maybe Taran Wanderer being my favorite.

 

I could have read the series as a kid, but didn't know of it until I saw it on Lark's blog.

 

Poetry

 

Anne Carson/Nox

 

This may be more -ish than actually poetry. The genre is sort of undefinable. About the death of her brother and her half-failed attempt to translate Catullus 101, which was about the death of his brother. Just now I think this is her masterpiece, though I'd still start with Autobiography of Red. Lithub the other day quoted her odds of winning the Nobel Prize this year at 33-1. She'd be a good choice as far as I was concerned.

 

Shakespeare/Measure for Measure 

 

Saw a superb production of the play a week ago here at Crow's Theatre, and reread it before going. 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice

That's either Claudio's idea of a Dantean hell, or an ordinary spring day in Toronto, I'm not sure which... 

 

Criticism

 

Philip Lopate/On Sontag

 

From 2009. Quite solid if you're interested in Sontag. He likes the things that are good and dislikes the things that aren't.

 

Lopate is a novelist and essayist. He's got a new book out about Washington Irving, and I was reading a review. That review said his new book was just OK, but to see Lopate really shine in literary criticism, you should read his book on Sontag. So I did.

 

Emily Eakin/The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory

 

Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Althusser, etc.  Eakin's book came out this year and is a good introduction to deconstruction and other French literary theoretical constructs. Her approach is mostly biographical rather than theoretical, and includes some autobiographical material about her own expericnce of Theory. Unlike quite a lot of actual French theory, it's readable.

 

She says she was influenced by Sarah Bakewell's At The Existentialist Café, and it shows. (Which I think a good thing.) If you liked Bakewell, you'll like this--it could be thought of as a sequel.

 

W. E. B. Du Bois/The Souls of Black Folk

 

My spin book was Du Bois' Autobiography, and this will show up in that upcoming post. This is on the Modern Library best non-fiction books of the 20th century, and deservedly so. 

 

Other Novels

 

Lidia Jorge/The Wind is Whistling in the Cranes

 

Jorge won the Camões Prize earlier this year--a lifetime award for writers in Portuguese, similar to the Cervantes Prize for Spanish writers. This came out in Portuguese in 2002. Sort of a three generation family novel, with a white property-owning family, and a black family of Cape Verdean immigrants, but told out of order. I tried to write about it but it didn't come together. It was interesting, but I didn't love it.

 

Martin Hansen/The Liar

 

A Danish novel that came out in 1950. The war is over but not forgotten or even forgettable. Johannes Lye is a schoolteacher on an island that is inaccessible in winter due to sea ice. Lye is not an accidental name; he's not to be trusted.

 

Qntm/There Is No Antimemetics Division

 

A sci-fi novel that came out this year that's been getting some buzz. I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but I liked this pretty well.

 

This books still around the house:

 

 

Both The Great Impersonation and The Souls of Black Folk come from Project Gutenberg.

 

And next month? I've mostly finished my spin book, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. There's also the 1949 Club coming up, hosted by Simon and Kaggsy. 

 

I'm looking at Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World, but, heck, that's still a week away, and everygthing could change... 😉

 

 

Hammond Innes' The Trojan Horse

"As a criminal court barrister you will know my name. You will, therefore, realize how urgent it is that I see you."

Paul Severin, as he introduces himself, or maybe Frank Smith, or Franz Schmidt, is wanted for the particularly grisly murder of his partner and is now on the run. He forces his way into the office of Andrew Kilmartin, a noted defense lawyer. But he doesn't want to turn himself in and go to court. The case is more complicated than that.

It's London, early in 1940. Germany has invaded Poland, but France and Norway still stand. The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union has started.

Schmidt (as he's usually called in the book, though Franzie to his daughter) is an engineer of genius and he's discovered a new alloy both light and strong that will revolutionize airplane engines. He's a Jew who was born in England, but mostly grew up in Austria, and got out only after Anschluss. Germany wants that alloy and Schmidt doesn't want to give it to them. He was framed for that murder, he says. But the Nazis have agents in high places and he can't go to jail.

This was a mystery/spy thriller with lots of good chase scenes. That's Kilminster emerging from the London sewers into the Thames basin (fortunately low-tide) after being captured and pursued. In the final chase there's a shipment of military cargo, including the prototype airplane engine, supposedly on its way to support Finland, but the bad guys plan on sending it to Germany instead. The final showdown starts in Norwegian territorial waters. This chase involves two British destroyers, both German and British air support, and a tank blasting away onboard that ship.

This was the first Hammond Innes I've read and I thought it was really good. Do you know: did I just happen to hit one of the best or are they all so good?

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

Golden Age (1940).  Body of Water.