James Sherry: Leadership is Magnetic as Power is Aphrodisiacal

James Sherry’s The Oligarch (Palgrave Macmillian) uses the twenty-six chapter structure of Machiavelli’s The Prince as the frame to discuss contemporary issues of governance, freedom, stability and personal responsibility. In place of Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus, James Sherry brings to the page Ross Perot, Jennifer Holmgren, Steve Jobs and Michael Bloomberg. Machiavelli’s work (to quote the Penguin Classics edition) is “a treatise on statecraft,” while Sherry’s new book might serve as the perfect guidebook for today’s aspiring super-entrepreneur. Reading Machiavelli or Sherry is an uphill experience—to borrow a phrase my grade school teacher often used to describe certain books—as opposed to maybe a good detective novel or celebrity memoir, which would be a downhill experience, and also not nearly as timely.

James Sherry is a poet, editor, publisher and author of over twelve books that variously provoke thought in the realms of poetry, prose, literary criticism and environmentalism. In this interview, we take on Machiavelli’s writing style, conspiracy theories, and Adam Curtis’s films on the ecology movement.

—Ben Tripp for Guernica

Guernica: What initially drew you to The Prince?

I studied in college. At that time, I was absorbed by the usual questions about Machiavelli’s seriousness and whether he supported princes and aristocracy or was really an ironic republican. Prior to the Medici taking over Florence, Machiavelli was secretary of the Second Chancery where he coordinated relations with Florence’s territorial possessions. So our professor always stressed how clearly Machiavelli’s personal perspective did not support the prince’s party. We concluded