JULES OLiTSKI
being an artist and all that. Also, I read a lot, and that was nice
too. She wanted it
to
be like that, that I had no future. That
was a comfort to her. But somehow things turned out differ–
ently. She could forgive me for that. She's really basically
decent, but when she discovered from what I'd said that I
hadn 't played the game, that all along I'd harbored this sense
of myself, the very opposite of a Jewish cripple, that was
unforgivabl e. H ence the look, and ultimately the divorce.
247
You see what rev ising is like for me. Backing and filling, fading
and feinting. Evading. A II this self-reflective crap about myself
and my problems. What about
Yull~,
the hero of this book, and
his problems?
O.K. , so this book is about a crazy artist named Yulli, who
some people think is a fool. Was Yulli a fool? If by fool we mean
someone who does foolish things (and what else can it mean if
not that?), then yes, surely Yulli was a fool. But who has not
done foolish things? Granted, some foolish things are more
foolish than others. I don 't want to judge. My guess is that our
hero's track record would qualify him as a fool, first class. You
may disagree. It's not crucial. You may feel he's not
that
much of
a fool, certainly not in the first echelon of fools. You may even
think he was not a fool at all. But why argue? Or you might
think he was a fool and worse, an idiot maybe. No, that would be
going too far. He had been brought up to be a fool and he did his
best to be one. Logically a fool should not survive, at least not
very long, since it is in the nature of a fool that he will not learn
from his experience. Fortunately for Yulli, fate is sometimes
kind to fools . Yulli is a rich and famous artist. Just like my
narrator. Just like me, except more rich, more famous , and
certainly more crazy.
