Editing Can Kill An Idiot: A Short Memoir

Told with humorous candor and enough self-defecation to require a double flush, Michael Kroft utilizes 28,000 words to quickly detail his five days leading up to the heart of the story, his then first-time ten-day stay in a hospital. With the actual situations almost too surreal to be called non-fiction, the memoir’s many anecdotes are presented in such an easy-to-read manner and with such a Devil-may-care attitude that it can only be told by a man so humbled by his years that he is forthcoming regarding his ignorance.

From first noticing a pain in his neck and as it grows, denying its dangerous potential and then trying to ignore it as he performs his final edit on his second novel while not being able to physically swallow and almost not being able to speak, Kroft walks us through his sometimes broken reasoning, his first aborted attempt at the Emergency Department, his first night at the hospital under the care of the nurse from Hell, the language tension lingering between a semi-monolingual Anglophone within a primarily Francophone hospital, waking up during his surgery, being hit on by an attractive female patient who just so happens to be..., and much more. The story will entertain, educate and perhaps even frighten.

Bob S. -Kroft’s best friend.