Sky’s Reviews > Lapham's Quarterly: Celebrity > Status Update

We can make a celebrity, but we can never make a hero. In a now almost forgotten sense, all heroes are self-made.

Two centuries ago when a great man appeared, people looked for God's purpose in him; today we look for his press agent.

The term "charisma" will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin

But the outstanding poet, whose inspiration is rare and unique, who makes nothing from common stock, strikes no debased poetic currency, minted with platitudes - though I can't think of one just now, still I'm sure they exist - such a paragon's life is bound to be free from anxieties, unclouded by bitterness; he's a woodland lover, and just the right to drink at the Muses' fountain.

✒ and pour out the wine of glistening bathos.

✒ The camera sees but doesn't think.