Writers are people, too.

It's kind of like when you realize your parents are human. You know, that little pivot in time when your mother says something unexpected or you notice that your father looks lonely and suddenly you know that they have lives and personalities that existed before you did.
Well, it's kind of like that when you realize that people who write books and stories are human beings. Publication doesn't turn someone into a demigod incapable of any real faults; nor does an innate talent to write something publishable make the one who possesses it naturally incapable of being a really messed up person.
I think I'm not the only one who idealizes such people. It's hard not to; even when they write about the worst parts of their sometimes sordid lives, the words themselves make a barrier between the real person doing the writing and the real person doing the reading. Words turn lives into stories, which are separate and safe and not real, even when we know they're true.
I usually skip those little paragraphs about the authors that introduce each story, but after reading Torch Song and Embalming Mom, I flipped back a few pages and inspected them for some sign, some justification of the depth of messed-upness to which the writers confessed.
I don't know what I expected to find. A couple sentences, perhaps:
"Charles Bowden is best know for his non-fiction piece, Torch Song, which he wrote after working for several years as a journalist. He was admitted to a psychological ward shortly after its publication."
or:
"...he disappeared soon after it was written and has not been heard from since."
or:
"...he published no other major works and committed suicide shortly after the piece was written."
Instead, I found an italicized list of books Bowden wrote, magazines he contributed to and awards he received. He's writing yet another book now.
I can't quite believe that one human being can hold so much anger and sadness and dysfunction and yet still be undoubtedly, conventionally successful. Authors, like their stories (no matter how factual they are) are fictional constructs and must be either good or bad, perfect or all but insane. But of course they aren't. They are human beings as I am and as you are, simultaneously successful and severely messed up.