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"Duology of Fools" is a series of works by the famous American writer Richard Russo. The novel tells the story of the decline of the American Rust Belt and the people at the bottom struggling in the decadence. Through the daily depiction of the small town, the writer keenly captures the life dilemmas, family conflicts, emotional entanglements, fulfillment and evasion of moral obligations of contemporary people. The seemingly simple family love presents complex emotional tension in Russo's writing. "Sully the Fool" is the first part of the "Duology of Fools". With humorous, seasoned, and touching words, the writer depicts the life of Bath Town, a simple town in northern New York: unhappy marriages, estranged father-son relationships, ruthless capital erosion, hopeless people who adhere to the bottom line of human nature... The novel unfolds with the life of the town's most unlucky resident, Sully, and radiates to a network of characters related to him. Sully is a man who tries his best to be alone all his life. He is cynical, perverse and rebellious. He lives his life, hates and is hated by the world around him. He is unable to change his destiny, but he is always ready to reshape the world through his own free will.

William Henry Devereaux, Jr. (Known as "Hank"), acting chair of the English Department at Western Pennsylvania State University, is about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. This wisecracking, middle-aged professor finally realizes that he is not suitable for an academic career. Although it took him twenty years to realize this, if not for the accumulation of self-deception over the years, how could this awakening be as hearty as the collapse of a brick wall? It is the cruelest month of April, and this special week is destined to be difficult: his wife is about to go to Philadelphia to interview for a new job; his obsession with multiple women, including the adult daughter of his colleague, is shaking his loyalty to his pragmatic wife Lily; his romantic father, who has been separated for forty years, is about to return to his mother's residence; The youngest daughter is preparing to end her marriage because her husband is unemployed; his nose was smashed by a sharp-tongued colleague with the spiral edge of a loose-leaf notebook, causing nosebleeds; the university is about to cut 20% of its staff funding; he is also well-founded and suspected by a group of harsh scholars, citizens and students of torturing the goose. A crazy mid-life crisis is brewing...