Red Doc> by Anne Carson (2013)

The predecessor to this, Autobiography of Red, was by turns fun and irritating. The irritation lay mainly in a lot of "posy" appendices and supporting paraphernalia, and occasionally in encountering gloopy approximation or overly knowing reference in the work itself, a kind of loose late 20th century poet-speak which lacks impact, or turns the reader off. I'm pretty sure a good quantity of the easily impressed are very taken with these dips to 'profundity' couched in pseudo-Beat language. Carson is capable in different areas; those I've just mentioned are her weakest mode. All these tropes are repeated here, with one exception: the crappy apparatus is gone - hooray for that. This takes Geryon from the first book forward to a period where he is known by the poet simply as G. I'm not sure, but the feeling I get is that his friend here, Sad But Great ('SBG' or mainly just Sad) is his old flame from the first book. They catch up with each other, and with a wild friend, Ida, and also later connect with an army survivor, 4NO, who may be a development of Sad's character, or may be a separate individual. This indicates quite how fluid and impressionistic this piece is. The journey starts with G and Sad and the road north, on and on, into icy territory - Alaska? The Rockies of the northwest? A territory of the frosted mind? They turn up at what is revealed as their destination - a kind of mental health facility, where they re-encounter Ida and meet 4NO. This is the locus of the second half of the book, where their encounters with one another, re-enacting scenes from the past, playing out their traumas, giving one another impressions, realisations of healing and blockedness, interactions with the staff and the program, form the narrative. Carson is occasionally luminous, pulling out an impression which really speaks, and occasionally drab and limited, seemingly just writing in a kind of common 'literary' automatism. This mixed impression is the key. Her intention seems both cool and serious and individual in the best moments, fussed and posy and over-referential in her worst, and often thinly middling. The more she can clear out the need for the latter and embrace the former, the more powerful she'll get. I wonder whether an illustrator would have helped; the transformation into a graphic novel may have assisted in bringing this piece more to life, in making its effect more memorable. As it is we're left with a piece with striking images and moments whose impact is destrung by many more of self-absorbed 'cleverness' or waffly indistinction.