“A Maven is someone who wants to solve other people’s problems, generally by solving his own,” Alpert said, which is true, although what I suspect is that the opposite is also true, that a Maven is someone who solves his own problems—his own emotional needs—by solving other people’s problems. Something in Alpert was fulfilled in knowing that I would thereafter buy a television or a car or rent a hotel room in New York armed with the knowledge he had given me.
