Knowing Writers: Essays & Reviews

Walter Cummins learned very early on that the writer he knew as a person, no matter how well, is not the writer whose words he read. Even when the material is autobiographical, even based on incidents he's heard about in great detail, the written version is another reality and the voice or character experiencing the situations a much more complex being than the person who told him about them. So, what does it actually mean to know a writer?