A writer writes to one person. His/her so-called audience is in fact
a single soul. The specific system of words, images, rhythms, phrases
that the writer molds and remolds have as their goal the most complete
satisfaction of this one reader he/she has in mind. A writer without
this goal—a person who reads what has been written just for
him/her—does not exist. “This book’s purpose,” writes Ludwig
Wittgenstein in the preface to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
“is achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood
it.” The achievement of that purpose is at the heart of any writing
act.
Now that we have established this understanding (that every writer
has a reader in mind), we can turn to the popular and award-winning
Seattle P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. and ask: Who is
his one reader?
Like all writers, Jamieson has an ideal subject for his work, a
reader who loses none of his linguistic and critical moves. Each
sentence written by Jamieson means everything to this imagined person.
But what kind of person picks up the newspaper on a Tuesday or Thursday
or Saturday, turns to the page that runs Jamieson’s column, and finds
himself/herself addressed directly? Who says: “Robert is speaking to
me. It is really me he is addressing. I’m the one who is activated by
these sentences. I’m the one who has arrived just in time to be
satisfied by his tone, metaphors, and word patterns.”
What kind of person is this reader who is
called/hailed/interpellated into being by Jamieson’s column? How do
they see the world? Where are they in the city? Judging from the
column, this person (certainly a man) doesn’t get out much but likes to
be transported, on a mental magic carpet, to the more dicey parts of
the city. A typical opening for the column: “Let’s go to the scene of
the crime.” Or: “I’m sitting at a table at Sugar’s on Aurora Avenue
North in Shoreline. The clock lumbers toward 1 a.m. Friday, and the
joint is not jumping.” Or: “[I’m in] the Shell station in Tukwila as
the clock edged to 3 a.m.” Or: “Twenty-Third Avenue crosses East Union
Street near the heart of the Central Area. Welcome to one of the most
notorious intersections in Seattle.”
Jamieson’s reader knows that some places in Seattle are not safe at
all and so greatly appreciates the risk he takes to report from these
local hot spots. “It’s Friday night, just after 10:45. Yellow police
tape ribbons a block of Pine Street at Second and Third. A white sheet
drapes over a man who has been fatally shot in front of a shoe store.
His body lies twisted and wedged between the curb and a silver
Kia.”
Jamieson’s reader is a reasonable man. When he reads, “I’d say
that’s a wise allocation of limited police resources,” he thinks to
himself: “Yes, I have to agree with you, Jamieson. This is a wise
allocation of police resources.” The reader also shares with the writer
a Washingtonian (as in Booker T. Washington) work ethic: “Work hard,
take advantage of opportunity, and refuse to let unfortunate
circumstances—a tough boss, poverty, or racism—become
excuses.”
Jamieson’s reader, however, is not conservative. Instead of
condemning the morally low practice of prostitution, the reader is
liberal (reasonable) enough to see the same good that Jamieson sees in
it: “With escort rates between $200 and $300 an hour, I now believe an
independent escort is hardly exploited financially—though this
line of work could leave psychological scars.”
Jamieson’s reader is all about the importance of a good education.
Nothing scandalizes him more than teens who know nothing about American
history. The decay of the education system is the decay of society:
“There are no excuses for parents skipping out on parent-teacher
meetings but showing up at every basketball or football game. Numerous
Seattle public school principals tell me that happens, and it shows
out-of-whack priorities. Don’t parents know education is
liberating?”
But what the reader enjoys most is the sermonic in Jamieson. Those
frequent moments when the column dissolves into a music-loud black
American church:
“This is where drugs and cash change hands out in the open,
protesters take to the streets for justice, and bullets too often
fly.
“This is where a football star found trouble, a Seattle mayor was
beaten in daylight, and just this week, a life was stolen.” At this
point, the reader wants to stand and say: “Tell it like it is,
Robert.”
(The color of Jamieson’s reader changes: If he is in a room with
white people, he is black; if he is in a room with black people,
he is white.)
Though moved by Jamieson’s bursts of sermonic eloquence, the reader
advocates moderation. We must not forget that while at Stanford,
Jamieson studied and admired the ancient Greeks. And what the Greeks
cast suspicion on were the passions. The art of life was the art of
finding the middle course through it. Jamieson’s reader is suspicious
of any form of excessive behavior that does not have as its end a
public good.
Out of the four million or so people in the Seattle area, Jamieson’s
reader believes his moral, social, and politic position is at the
midpoint of this population. Jamieson’s reader is our man in the
middle. 
