Although it tends to drive me crazy, I find the way Anne Carson uses punctuation very inventive. Indeed, on several occasions, the author does not use any punctuation marks. Any reader, from his/her younger age, is used to reading sentences structured by punctuation marks, which are sometimes essential to understand meaning. Carson’s choice not to use punctuation for some passages of Autobiography of Red may have different significations.
For example, on chapter XVIII, when the grandmother starts talking “without interrupting her sentence” (p. 57), it seems that the reader perceives her speech the way Geryon perceives it. Maybe he doesn’t get what she is talking about and the absence of punctuation marks confuses the reader, just as her speech confuses Geryon. Moreover, one can consider punctuation marks as a way to set boundaries. With no punctuation, one can set their own rhythm, can decide to read the text as they want. It may be a way to refuse conventions, just as Carson “resists the temptation to represent Geryon’s subjectivity through the limits of nameable social identities” (Georgis 165). Additionally, since the whole novel is a reference to a Greek myth, one can see the non-use of punctuation as a reminder that tales were originally told orally.