Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I have a literary crush. Since first encountering this woman’s work several years ago, I have read her sentences aloud to more friends, acquaintances, and pets than I can count. At the end of each piece, I can’t help thinking: I want to meet this person. I want to pour a couple of drinks, pull a thread of ideas, and follow wherever the conversation wanders.

Why can’t I just enjoy her work and leave her alone? I know the gulf between art and artist can yawn wide. I also know I may simply be craving glory by association. Mostly, though, I think my life would be qualitatively richer for knowing the person behind those delightful and insightful words. Also, dare I say, her life might be enriched by knowing me.

Have you ever tracked down one of your living heroes? If so, how did it go? If not, what did you do with the unrelenting impulse to know them personally?

In all seriousness,

Not a Stalker

Dear Reader,

Very interesting. Do you know many writers? Because if you do, you’ll already be aware that the person on the page, so stylish and alluring, is very different from the person in the world—who is petulant and broody and self-absorbed, and can’t find their socks, and shakes their fist in the night at invisible editors, and takes three days to change a lightbulb, and weeps gently when they find they’ve run out of whiskey. I won’t say that a writer’s writing is the best part of themselves, but it is the most coherent; the writer’s actual personality is more of an afterthought. It lies around in glowing lumps, like the by-product or drossy sublimate of some violent industrial process. All of which is to say: Yes, you’ll be disappointed.

But that’s not the real question here. The real question is what to do with this crush, this “unrelenting impulse” of yours. To quote my friend John: Sweat it out. Digest, metabolize, transmogrify, do push-ups, take trains until it ceases to fill your imagination. You’re not a stalker (yet). But I get the feeling you’re in the grip of a fantasy. I’ve been there. So do not pursue or even virtually prowl around this writer. That way lies confusion. Do not so much as send a chastely admiring note—you’ll get wound up waiting for a response. Disentangle yourself from her beautiful sentences. Read some other books, by some other voice-y, glittery writers. Leave her in her realm, and get back to yours.

In solidarity,

James

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