American Nobel?

[David Payne]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 (05:46:16 -0700), Mark (markekohut at yahoo.com) wrote:

> (By the way, when I reread Weber's "Politics as a Vocation" I had this real or projected epiphany: Essay says charisma (and USING IT) is what any leader [politician/religious leader, etc.] must have. And, in using it, one's authentic self inevitably suffers.
>
> I think this is a deep reason TRP believes in privacy---a value of authenticity; a human value sounded most in AtD and mostly lost in the modern world.

Really interesting idea. Pardon the dialetic/exploration, but is charisma purely physical? Can charisma be expressed by words alone? Is Pynchon--or any other writer (perhaps of yr favorite blog or list serve)--a leader?

But even if charisma is purely physical, is it outside the authentic self ... or is the idea that manipulating others is the eradication of self? In which case does the act of writing for an audience cause the authentic self to suffer? (Maybe there's a reason that writing, as an art, tends to reveal so many drunkards as artists.)
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