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  • H of H Playbook by Anne Carson book cover
  • H of H Playbook by Anne Carson book cover
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H of H Playbook

by Anne Carson

A visual and verbal reworking of Herakles

$25.52 USD
$42.54 USD $25.52 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

A visual and verbal reworking of Herakles

Anne Carson approaches Euripides’ tragedy through drawings and language, making the book both a response to an ancient play and an inquiry into its central moral question. Herakles returns from war to a domestic life he cannot inhabit, then commits a terrible act; the account also turns toward the possibility of redemption through his friend Theseus. Whether that possibility can stand after such violence is left for the reader to judge. The source’s closing reference to painter Anselm Kiefer’s view of landscape adds another point of reflection, linking the work’s concerns with violence to the idea that even a landscape may bear traces of harm.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in Anne Carson’s work across language and visual art.
  • Readers exploring Euripides, Greek tragedy, or the myth of Herakles.
  • Readers interested in questions of violence, guilt, and redemption.

Themes

Greek tragedy and mythViolence and domesticityGuilt and redemptionDrawing and language

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

H of H Playbook is an explosion of thought, in drawings and language, about a Greek tragedy called Herakles by the 5th-century BC poet Euripides. In myth Herakles is an embodiment of manly violence who returns home after years of making war on enemies and monsters (his famous "Labors of Herakles") to find he cannot adapt himself to a life of peacetime domesticity. He goes berserk and murders his whole family. Suicide is his next idea. Amazingly, this does not happen. Due to the intervention of his friend Theseus, Herakles comes to believe he is not, after all, indelibly stained by his own crimes, nor is his life without value. It remains for the reader to judge this redemptive outcome.
"I think there is no such thing as an innocent landscape," said Anselm Kiefer, painter of forests grown tall on bones.
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