a cursed copy of ‘autobiography of red’
a cursed copy of ‘autobiography of red’
Anne Carson's "novel in verse" is 5.25 x 8 x 0.45 inches & 149 pages long & has been half-read three times by at least two different people.
Welcome to Purse Book, a weekly newsletter about reading hot little books & being a gal on the go. If you haven’t already, you absolutely may subscribe now:
I use a fresh bookmark for every book I read, a piece of ephemera preferably like a ticket or one of my many beautiful handwritten notes from one of my many beautiful friends. The bookmark remains in the book when I’m done. I also underline and dog-ear books, profligately!, so it’s very easy to figure out if I’ve finished a book just by looking at it.
When the monthly queer bookclub at Giovanni’s Room selected Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red for our meeting a couple weeks ago, I was like, Oh I’ve read that and Oh, I’ll reread the whole thing. Wrong twice!
First, I could tell from the bookmark (a business card from a vintage store in Colorado) and all the dog-ears that I’d only made it halfway, to Page 72, where there’s also a huge dog-ear, as if to say: MAGGIE WILL RETURN TO UNFOLD THIS. She did not.
This time around, I got into a series of predictable professional whirlwinds and interpersonal distractions so I simply ran out of time and only made it to Page 74. Two away from the original stop! A fairly cursed coincidence, if you ask me and the person sitting next to me at bookclub!
More cursedly, I was not the first person to falter partway through this copy. My Autobio was used. The reader before me—a pink highlighter user—only made it to Page 51, where the highlighting rate drops precipitously. That’s also the page where they conclude a little essay they’re drafting in the margins which employs Kierkegaard’s “The Tragic in Ancient Drama” to analyze this strange, eruptive little novel that’s lying about being a novel.
When I’m reading a used book, I feel especially skilled at determining whether the previous owner read it in college. This one was a big gimme.
Another friend at bookclub also had a used copy, in which the first reader circled every use of the word red, which reminds me of a lost-to-time Believer list of all the types of “red” in Lolita. The only ones I remember are “stinging red” and “red as licked red candy.”
I was also in college when I partially read Autobiography of Red for the first time. I made a snotty note about the first reader’s pink highlighter. I underlined their handwritten essay (in appreciation, I think) but then I corrected a spelling error. As if I am not Queen Maestro of Spelling Errors!
In sum: everything is embarrassing. Please let me know if I deserve to finish this book or if the trembling agony of an unknown conclusion is the correct and most poignant lesson for pink-highlighter-Kierkegaard and me.