J. Bernlef was an extremely productive writer. Throughout his career of 50 years, he published two or three books every year. Many of his books, both novels and collections of short stories seem to comprise of two works, as if they combine two shorter works in one volume. This can be confusing, because the theme may be related but the unity of the work as a whole is less.

The short story collection Cellojaren consists of two such parts: 9 stories under the subtitle "Het begin van tranen" and 10 stories under the subtitle "Cellojaren". The short stories in the latter part are all about artists. The stories are not interconnected. They write about events that occur in the lives of different kinds of artists. For example, a painter who falls prey to a gallery who makes the artist pay for all expenses. This is quite normal practise in the Netherlands where thousands of artists look for places to organize exhibitions in hunderds of semi-professional galleries. The other nine stories were unclear. ( )