Can a single person be the source of a pathology?

I don’t mean in a “Patient Zero” kind of way, where one guy with tuberculosis or SARS or H1N1 spreads it to others. This isn’t a physical pathology. This is more of a mental thing.

And I don’t mean in that way that they’ve found individual cells in people’s brains that respond to a certain person, like Oprah Winfrey or Paris Hilton. This is a whole-brain thing – something I can think about and evaluate, rather than something that shows up on a brain scan. Although, to be fair, I haven’t ever had a brain scan and so can’t say with any certainty that it wouldn’t show up, or even that I have a brain at all. There are certain things I’m just taking for granted.

Here’s the thing: I can’t seem to hold Jonathan Goldstein in my mind.

From here, I can hear the collective silence as each and every one of you tries to figure out what the hell that means. You can’t hold Jonathan Goldstein in your mind, either, you say. You don’t even know the man. Or perhaps you know who I’m talking about: you’ve heard him on “This American Life,” perhaps, or on his own show “Wire Tap.” Maybe you like his work, or maybe you don’t get it, or maybe it just makes you change the station, but that’s what I mean. You have an opinion of him, and you can remember why you have that opinion. You can call to mind something about the man or his work that formed that opinion and therefore feel comfortable with it. When you hear the name “Jonathan Goldstein,”  either you know that you’ve never heard of him, or there is an entire mental Wikipedia article in your mind. 

My problem is that I know that I like his work a lot, but every single time I hear something by him (I’ve never read a print version of his work, my "reading" is largely audiobooks – you’re welcome, drivers of Highway 85), I think “Wow, I really love this. It’s genius.” And yet, if I have heard a given work before (and I usually have), I also think “I don’t remember this at all.” My mental Wikipedia page just has that line that says that there’s no page for that entry, and do you want to create one? And I do, I desperately want that page, but no matter how many times I try to create it, listening to various works and interviews, it just doesn’t ever save to my mental server. (For the record, there is a very nice Wikipedia page for Jonathan Goldstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Goldstein_(author)), although the picture is easily the worst non-mugshot picture I’ve ever seen of anyone.)

Am I jealous of him? Sure, but only in the same way that I’m vaguely jealous of lots of really talented authors whose work I admire. I wish I’d written their stuff. The difference is that with most of them, I can quote them by heart. I can summon up well-though-out deconstructions of their work that explain why I like them. I can distill their genius into a format that I can then apply to my own work. I can’t do that with his writing, because I can’t remember a single word or phrase. No. That’s not true. I remember the phrase “macaroni salad.” That’s it.

Am I secretly in love with him? I don’t think so. While he’s a gifted writer, I don’t find him compelling as a romantic partner. At first I thought it was because he was much younger than me, but then I realized that he’s really not that much younger than me. The biggest reason I thought so was the fact that his tendency to whine about his adolescence and youth seemed more fitting to someone in his late twenties than someone closing in on 40. The second-biggest reason is that not a single one of the "friends" he talks to on the radio seem to actually like him. He's like Woody Allen without the swaggering persona.

Am I obsessed with him? Clearly not. Obsession is when a person seizes on an idea or another person and internalizes everything about them. Obviously, I am able to internalize nothing about Jonathan Goldstein. Sometimes when I hear people on the radio, I Google their images to see what they look like, to see if my mental picture squares with reality. Every time I start thinking about Jonathan Goldstein and look up his image, and it's the same as when I hear his writing. I'm sure that I've seen it before. For instance, I remember that he wears glasses. And yet, it's as though I've never seen him before. I wear glasses. Someone could put a picture of me on his Wikipedia entry and I would look at it and think nothing more than "Wow. He looks an awful lot like me." 

The one thing that does stick in my mind in relation to Jonathan Goldstein is that he interviews people, and it never seems that he really has control of an interview. If, say, Ira Glass is talking to someone and they make a point that isn't clear or that seems contradictory or exaggerated, Glass says "Wait a minute!" and proceeds to make the interviewee explain himself. Goldstein tries to hold his subjects' feet to the fire, but all a person need do is say "Shut up!" with enough vehemence and Goldstein backs right down.

I often think that I'd like Jonathan Goldstein to interview me. It would sound like this:
JG: Hi...hello. Thank you for coming onto my show.
ME: You should thank me. I'm doing you a helluva favor.
JG: I just did. I said thank you.
ME: Well? Aren't you going to ask me any questions?
JG: Sorry. Um. How long have you been gracing humanity with the insight and wisdom of your writing?
ME: Well phrased!
JG: That's how you wrote it down.
ME: It's still well-phrased.
JG: Sorry.
ME: I've been doing this my whole life, ever since my parents, the king and queen of Phoenix, Arizona, bought me my first public library.
JG: Isn't Arizona part of the United States? I don't think that any part of the United States is a monarchy.
ME: What the hell would you know about it? You live in CANADA, buddy!
JG: Sorry...

Okay, come to think of it, this is probably not very much like what I would sound like if Jonathan Goldstein ever interviewed me. For one thing, it's not true. My parents were not monarchs of any country, state, county, city, or local tax district. For another thing, I'm just not that combative normally. Yes, I do think mean and hostile thoughts about people frequently, but I almost never say them out loud. Unless they're funny.

Actually, I have no idea what my interview with Jonathan Goldstein would be like. Because although my idea of Jonathan Goldstein is slippery and elusive, I don't know that my grip on myself is any less tenuous. Every second, I'm someone else. Now I'm nice, now I'm snarky, now I'm confident, now I'm insecure, now I'm willful, now I'm indecisive. My idea of myself changes constantly according to many things - who I'm with, where I am, what I think I can pull off.

So maybe that's it. Maybe the truth is that not only will I never be interviewed by Jonathan Goldstein, but I'll never even be able to get a mental fix on him because I'm never the same person as I was the last time I heard him. My other favorite authors - Murakami, Bowles, Peake - make you who they want you to be when you read them. It's like signing an end-user license agreement on software. By merely picking up the book, you agree to be bound by all of the author's assumptions and views, and to use them as the basis from which to appreciate their work. Goldstein isn't presumptuous enough to ask that of you. To demand that you change for him. To demand that you be anything but whatever you may be at the moment.
And since I never stop changing, that means that the work of an author I enjoy will never get old for me. If I'm different at every moment, then no matter how many times I read it, it'll be fresh. How lucky does that make me? How lucky does that make Jonathan Goldstein?