Fing, D. Selby: - About the Fictional AuthorD. Selby Fing was a failed priest, poet, father and husband who lived a life of abandonment and sorrow in Philadelphia from 1941-60. Raised by his Catholic grandparents (in circumstances of desperation) to become a priest, Fing had the first of several bouts with mental illness, when he was asked to leave the seminary at age 19. He then became an itinerant English teacher and poet, moving around the USA and finding work in various places, always for a short time, because of his instability. He and his common-law wife, Lilica Del Rio, had two children. They moved back to Philadelphia in the last years of his life, where he experienced his final breakdown after finishing The Profane Comedy. He killed himself on July 4th, 1976.