David Mason
Beloved Immoralist: One Man’s Love of a Fictional Character
David Mason – former poet laureate of Colorado and current resident of Tasmania – recounts his father’s life. And also how his father fell in love with a fictional character from Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth.
A man dies, but a character lives. A man seldom wishes to be a character, but he becomes one anyway, the moment he is recalled. At the end, the spark of my father’s character gave only the faintest light. A restless spirit was reduced to something less than infancy, tinged with paranoia. 'I’m in hell,' he said from somewhere in the depths of dementia. Before then, what a character!