New Yorker Fiction Review #168: "Back the Way You Went" by Anne Carson

Artwork: Chloe Poizat

Review of a short story from the Oct. 31 issue of The New Yorker...

If I thought this story sounded familiar in some way, it's because I reviewed a very similarly un-enjoyable Anne Carson story from The New Yorker almost exactly a year ago. Proving how much farther behind I am now, last year I reviewed, on March 24, 2016, a story from the Jan. 11, 2016 issue. Sigh.

Anne Carson is a poet. So naturally when she writes prose (if that's what you can call this piece) it's going to have that disjointed, stream of consciousness feeling, and she's not going to feel like she has to obey the "rules" that fiction writers have to. At least that's what I've discovered from reading the prose that poets write. Just like when I try to write poetry it comes out distinctly "prosey."

What am I trying to say? I did not enjoy this story on the first read-through, or the second. I get what she was trying to do, it just didn't work for me.

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