JULES OLiTSKI
now I've gotten the right touch, the right feel , or now it's less
self-conscious, more direct. There are a number of versions of
this book. I have a file crammed full of manuscripts.
In
some
versions the language is spare, bare, in others verbose, garru–
lous, and each time I revise, I think, this is it, this will be the
final revision. So when I say I am on the final revision I have
no way of knowing if this final revision will be final.
It
could
stretch out to another ten or fifteen years, which is O.K. too,
considering the problem of my friends, who think I'm writing
a book about them. Let it stretch out then, ten years, twenty
years, thirty years. Some of them may have died off by then.
Not that I want that to happen. God forbid. As my mother
would say, "You should bite your tongue." Thirty years? I
could be dead by then too. I've written a book in the first
person in some versions, and changed to the third in others.
Sometimes I tell too little, or too much. And always, as I
revise, there's the problem of my friends, as if they're all in the
room with me, standing over my shoulder, jeering at me,
mocking, winking, making faces, sticking out their tongues.
They're angry. What will they think? What will my mother
think? My mother. Well, she doesn ' t know about the book.
Not yet, anyway. But suppose it's published, what then?
Well, she can't read. She's illiterate. Ahl But she has friends
who can read. So much for that. It's a different thing with my
friends. Oh, they know how to read alright. And they know
about the book. They talk about it. They talk about it among
themselves. Sometimes they talk to me about it. Mostly they
want to know if they are in it. One asks, "Is it an expose of the
art world?"
I say "What a waste of time that would be. How boring.
Besides I don 't even know the inside of the art world well
enough to expose anything." But no one believes me.
Another friend, referring to a mutual friend, says,
" If
you
tell the truth about
him,
you will destroy him. You know how
he idolizes you. Are you trying to wreck his career?"
"No," I protest, hurt that anyone could think me capable
of such viciousness . "Good god," I say, "there's no malice in
the book. None! Anyway, all the characters are composites," I
say, trying to sound like a professional novelist. "You know
how it is when you write. You begin to invent. A character
grows, he takes on his own life. And after all the one character
in the book, Yulli, who people might think is me, really is the
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