Personally I enjoyed the way you write a review more than I enjoyed the way the story was written.  If I had to take a stab at why that is, my guess would be that it was clear, honest, and useful advice for anyone who writes. In short, worth the time to read!

> Haha I have to say I am surprised by your disdain, but not totally put off. Although, I would call your comment more of a reaction than a critique.

I'm sorry! But I won't pretend I like it if I don't. And I also agree that it was more of a reaction than a critique. But I honestly said what I thought would be most helpful for you to improve. The problem, the way I see it, is all about the contents of the story. There's nothing wrong with the structure. And most stuff one discusses with a proper critique is inherently structural. I *could* have discussed story mechanics, but there isn't all that much that happens. The real story lies in the *logic* of the story and that idea is so strange to me that I don't know how I'd go about discussing it.

> The most offensive thing was that you thought I'd shy away from criticism! Which is really not what I was trying to do with the preamble.

I didn't mean to suggest it was done intentionally. It was my impression, or reaction, from reading it 

Haha I have to say I am surprised by your disdain, but not totally put off. Although, I would call your comment more of a reaction than a critique. The most offensive thing was that you thought I'd shy away from criticism! Which is really not what I was trying to do with the preamble. 

What I'm getting for your reaction is that is that it feels like the whole point of the story is to be clever, under the guise of doing something more meaningful and absurd, that it doesn't actually deliver on. Which in a way is what I was going for, I wanted to write a story about how weird it is that things die, but I thought it'd be more meaningful if that idea was carried out in this interplay between some asshole lit-guy and this found, non-reliable manuscript. Obvious I achieved something, if it struck such a chord. But not the grand emotion of a great story.

**GENERAL REMARKS**

Alright, there's a lot to discuss here! First I want to say that your preamble is a clever trick, but it's designed to protect you from criticism and we can't have any of that, can we?

Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean is that the preamble is written such that any flaws of the main story are explained away. No matter what it had said, an argument could be made that why *of course* it had to be like that because the preceding context transforms bad prose into good prose by virtue of the logic of the story. Which is, like I said, quite clever. But the true purpose of it is to protect you, the writer, from harm. And whenever you make a decision as a writer to put your own needs before those of your reader it's to the detriment of both.

You have the quasi-intellectual preamble and the "salt of the earth" main text. The former is arrogant where the latter is humble. This has the effect of taking the pressure off the main text which, again, is a way of protectin

The bits of story I critique are not in order. I read through it twice and commented on whatever caught my attention spontaneously. I apologize if its disorienting.

PROSE:

"Omnipresent, death is."

This is awkward. Its blatantly clear that it was meant to be important. Which isn't bad in of itself, just the way the sentence was structured here seems unnessary. A more subtle approach would've been better. 

"I had a lot of feelings welling up."

At first, this seemed like another redundant sentence, but then pondering over it more, I grew to appreciate it. The tone of the story suggests that the protagonist is telling all of this to a friend, and this is how I imagine it would be like.

"writes Dr. Andrew Khossman, editor of the virtually unknown 2010 anthology, Facing Death: a Literary Approach to the Post-Medical Phenomenon." 

This should be at the end of the paragraph. Because if what Khossman wrote interests the reader, they would want to know why and when he wrote it. But certai

The Dead and The Dying [3392]