Felix Krull
Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull (from his unfinished book Confessions of Felix Krull) was a Hochstabler, a con-man.
My first encounter with a con-man was in my class in elementary school. My class mate sailed through his day by lying. He lied about the most mundane things, just for the heck of it. We were all impressed when our teacher asked him to read from an essay we were supposed to write in our homework, and when called upon — totally unprepared — made it all up on the spot.
The man whose name we curse every day wrote me a letter one day, with a signature spanning more than two inches; a maniacal zig-zag in a black felt marker that filled a good part of the A5-format page. It was the signature of a true con-man, honest for once in portraying his oversized sense of self. Someone in charge of protocol had prepared the letter as a congratulation on my 2017 Nobel Prize.
The arrival of the letter took me by surprise because in a public statement, weeks before, I had declared that if invited, I would spurn an invitation by him to the White House.
But seeing his signature again, this time acknowledging his arraignment on his indictment in federal court, invoked fond memories of the time he was my most disdained president.
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