More specifically, The Missing is "Start Their Therapy Fund Before You Have Kids: A Conversation with Ben Tanzer about The Missing,” which you may read here. You may also read some excerpt below. Cool? Quite so, I'd say.
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While reading “The Missing,” I called my mother to thank her for being so awesome. What inspired you to dissect two very intelligent but painfully damaged adults?
Your mother is awesome and so is mine—not competing, mind you, just stating the facts. As for the actual question, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately while I’ve been working on this other project. What I’ve been thinking about are the themes artists are drawn to and how they keep revisiting them from different angles, trying to make sense of them, and how those themes come from something they’re trying to understand about themselves or the world. For me, my fascination, even obsession, is not with the very intelligent yet flawed, necessarily, but people who are self-aware (enough), and still can’t be their best selves. They don’t communicate as well as they’re capable of even when the right words are right there on the tip of their tongues, they’re too impulsive, they can be self-hating, get in their own ways, fail to take care of themselves or one another, lack proper coping mechanisms, all of which I write without judgement—I know these feelings and actions all too well. I also want to understand them and those who follow paths I do not. What happens to them?