Often he felt like a character on manuscript paper, like someone he himself had made up long ago. In a sense, of course, that was true. There was no Joel Beer. Even this time and place were imaginary; the people, himself included, were like toys shoved hither and yon by some giant author beyond the clouds. On a rainy day, it was possible to imagine the thunder as the tapping of giant typewriter keys. Even the city was unreal. Just because it was called Denver, Colorado, and the encyclopedias said it had been here for a long time, that didn’t make it so. In the world an author creates, things leap full-blown to life as needed. If a character needs tradition, the author creates it out of whole cloth. He makes up something called Encyclopedia Americana and puts Volume Eight in his character’s hands. “Denver,” he reads, “a city in Colorado, capitol of the state coextensive with Denver County.” And on and on until he’s convinced. The author moves his character out of the Denver Public Library and there, a block away, is the gold-domed statehouse.
