Desmond set off to find out, thinking he’d stumbled upon a hobby. Four years later he had a nearly completed manuscript, an advance from a publisher, and a new career.

After much consideration, he called his biography of Westerly His Hard Road to Hell. In ways that Desmond hadn’t anticipated at the start, Westerly’s life, like his novels, encompassed Big Social Issues, although not ones the author had written about at such exhausting length. In this case, it was Homosexuality, Domestic Violence (each of Westerly’s four battered wives had divorced him, a fact which helped boost his macho image), Alcoholism, and Laxative Abuse. In the decades since his death, debunking the myth of the manly man had become as popular as sitting at his feet once had been, and the biography became a minor best-seller. In the wake of the publicity for Desmond’s book, three of Westerly’s novels had been reissued and had sold surprisingly well. Readers were no longer interested in hearing what he had to say about the world, but they examined the books closely, seeking authorial homoeroticism and unintended hints at pedophilia. Westerly’s personal life was so vastly at odds with his public persona, Desmond’s book was taken seriously by academics who saw some deconstructionist value in it. In a final coup, the book had been optioned by Paramount, although it looked to Desmond as if a film would never be made. Several screenwriters had attempted to come up with a script, but any movie star with enough clout to get the project made wanted to play an inspiring and heroic character, which meant doing away with every fact of Westerly’s life that made it interesting.

Shortly after His Hard Road to Hell came out, Desmond had been offered a job teaching writing courses at Fordham. Since then, he’d accepted temporary teaching jobs around town when he needed money or formal structure in his life.