On what is below

I don't know.  I've been reading Poe, and read this story for the first time last night, and it has been rattling around in my brain all day.  I don't think it is very good.  There is actual analysis, to an extent, inside of the story.  But the analysis is smothered by the fiction, and is paradoxically far too obvious.  Both Poe and Borges tend to do that- create a story and explain things in large chunks of dialogue, so you can take it as an homage, if you want, but they also have an artistry that more than makes up for it, and I do not.  I mean, it clearly is an homage, to both of them, but an awkward and unsuccessful one.  I feel that the analysis is both too clunky and also too shallow.  But, you know, I really wanted to try something new, and there are phrases with which I am not entirely unhappy.   The final paragraph is really the only one that describes how I feel about the present.  I probably won't try it again.