“In 1961, a recovering addict was saved by the works of an uplifting novelist. Months later, the man found out his role model committed suicide one morning. Liar, he cried. It was like watching his hero say that heroes don’t exist and then flying away. What do books mean if the writer gave up? The reader decided to give heroism a try and wrote stories about how great life can be until he could convince himself of it. The experiment is still in the works.”
