Autobiography is a Big Word

When Geryon first started writing his Autobiography , it struck me as important, because it took a step back from the scenic descriptions and started to define the truths of Geryon’s world. It reads,

“On the cover Geryon wrote Autobiography. Inside he set down the facts. Total facts about Geryon. Geryon was a monster everything about him was red. Geryon lived on an island in the Atlantic called the Red Place. Geryon’s mother was a river that runs to the sea the Red Joy River Geryon’s father was gold. Some say Geryon had six hands six feet some say wings…” (page 37).

This was the first thing that Geryon wrote, supposedly. Before this, he’d still been trying to create an autobiography, just from a cigarette and a tomato (page 34-35), because he couldn’t write yet. After suspending disbelief about how a child who just learned to write knows the word “autobiography,” we can examine these “facts.” Geryon has expressed the importance of facts to him previously. He seems to respect facts in a peculiar way, especially considering how most of his story is in prose. I propose that he values facts so much because his life feels so fragmented and uncemented, as described by the “cinematic”-like chapters. So, he has to cement some realities and believe the things he writes about himself are true.

The first thing Geryon describes about himself is his redness. He takes his identity as “a monster” without question, and then furthers a certain devilish image by saying “everything about him” is red. Not just his appearance but his emotions, his state of being, his intentions. Red is associated with anger, lust, embarrassment, hunger– most of which are things Geryon has described in some way at this point. Geryon then describes not consistent with what we have read so far, saying he lives on an island. By this he might mean he lives in isolation, but surrounded by a positive resource, his mother the river. A river is very mystical, an uncontainable, ever-changing fixture of an environment. He sees beauty and refuge in her existence, but does not feel that she is corporeal in the same way as him. Even further removed is his father’s description, just “gold.” Perhaps the color, perhaps the mineral– this vagueness makes sense considering the father has barely been mentioned thus far.

In the bigger picture, Geryon’s motivations for even writing an autobiography are conflicted and yet intuitive. Even a child, he is desperate to tell his story, to describe himself for what he is. Yet, his descriptions are not all that kind. I think his words are the expressions of a person who is so suppressed that they cannot help but try and escape their existence, through metaphor and truth-telling, but who has a hard time escaping the marginalization that have been placed upon them while in that cage. It reminds me of how a lot of our readings have had a lot to do with personal stories– we read many works by Eli Clare, and he outlined many intricate details of his life. Even Written on the Body, while still unnamed, the narrator is very concerned about the “self,” and what they have experienced. This idea of “autobiography” is a reoccurring one, and might tell us something about the importance of stories, and understanding individual experiences on a case by case basis instead of through generalities.