The book’s title is Autobiography of Red a Novel in Verse; the two words that stand out here are autobiography and novel. An autobiography is a person writing about his or her own life while a novel is “A fictional prose narrative of considerable length.” The key word in the definition of a novel being fiction, which is the opposite of what the telling of personal life experiences represents. The purpose of this inventiveness is to show to the reader this person who uses the word red to express his feelings is also using a Greek myth to express himself in his autobiography, which gives him the ability to add fiction to his life story. Throughout the novel Geryon is trying to discover himself and express who he is through his autobiography. It is obvious that Geryon sometimes doesn’t know how to express him self which is shown by the use of the word red being things/emotions that he cant explain. So, at some points in this book he changes the truths of his life into fiction of what he wishes he could feel. This is shown when he writes an autobiography and then his mother at the parent teacher conference asks if he ever writes about anything with a happy ending and he then writes “New Ending. All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand in had” (Carson 38). Geryon here uses his imagination to write a new ending like someone would use in a novel to create what he could experience.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/novel