Author Michael Lewis on writing, grief, and Sam Bankman-Fried | BBC News

oh look who it is what a surprise I can't believe I found you here it's been so long can I just say I'm standing here feeling kind of jealous why well look we didn't even put it there it wasn't even stay no well I mean it's selling very well so why not and the cover looks good I think the cover kind of Pops I'm wondering if you get a bit Jade you know I've had it one or two times books in Windows but you must get it all the time so when the the thing that gives makes my socks go up and down is not seeing the book in the bookstore window but it's walking down the aisle of an airplane and seeing people read the book that when you see people reading it I've sat next to somebody once who was reading my book and I didn't say anything I was far too so I had exactly that experience after liar poker came out I I was I it was a version of this I sat down to reread my book because I was coming back for the paperback book tour from England and the guy next to me goes he looks at the book and he says I read that book and I said I before I could stop him he says cynical bastard we spent it was a 7h hour flight 7 hours he was playing 20 questions trying to figure out who I was and he was getting closer and closer and closer I was just was did you manage to make the whole flight by the time you landed he hadn't figured it out that you were the cynical bastard I was the cynical bastard should we gone in yeah this is do you know this shop by the way have you been here yes but ages ago uh I mean I used to live in Washington so I know this is my favorite bookshelf in DC well I can see why so this is interesting because your books were all over the store here we go just to make sure that people don't miss that one that is the author's Instinct isn't it know that it's put in the right position put it over someone else's I shouldn't do that anyway um no I think think I think it shows up enough um you write about such an Eclectic group of subjects but you write about them in a similar way is that fair if your point of entry is character and it doesn't much matter where the character is you can go you go anywhere I mean if you think about like this is my first book here this one all right that taught me a lesson and the lesson was liar poker liar poker taught me a lesson and the lesson was if you can attach the reader to a person they'll follow that person anywhere and I know I knew I need to explain like the mortgage bond market who wanted to read about the mortgage bond market but once you were attached to me they would follow me into the mortgage bond market and so all these books are just using is the same device so when you say I write about in the same way I think that's true it sort of like tends to be character first and the character leads you through material teaches you gives you insights all the rest uh a lot of authors write about character but you also on top of that I'd say the kind of thing you're known for is choosing these subjects that quite dense quite nerdy don't sound on paper if I was giving getting the elevator pitch right I wouldn't think oh yeah that's a blockbuster subject that everybody's going to want to read about no this is funny and then you turn them into movies that Brad Pit wants to be in so it's funny you say that because I have found it's almost a reliable indicator that I found my next subject if I'm at a dinner party and someone says what are you working on and I say it and their eyes glaze over and there's no follow-up question and and it's like uh you know you see them thinking God I feel so sorry for this bastard he's got to go write this book about that and and what has happened is I've gotten particularly interested in something and seen something that's interesting about it that isn't obvious to the world in some way and so it actually is that that ends up being a good thing in the end it's sort of like it's a little bump do you really want to read about high frequency trading or do you really want to read about the United States government right right and there's a first initial bump up when someone says actually you do because people light up so like now I have a reason to go learn something new so so what comes first is it uh the tradings of Wall Street and people don't know what they're doing the big short is it is it the subject the inner workings of the American government the pandemic planning the back office of a baseball team and the number crunches or is it the characters that you're looking for I can't do it without a character so that's a necessary ingredient sometimes the idea has preceded the character like the big short I what I knew I I knew I knew the Wall Street firms had made these catastrophic bets on subprime mortgages right I knew that they they were the stupid money at the table and that was a new thing and that there was smart money at the table and the question was who so in that case it was well there were I turned out there were 15 money managers who kind of gone all in on this bed and I did a casting search I mean I went looking for characters to tell the story about what had happened so so I didn't meet the characters until after I had the notion Moneyball is sort of like all at once that I was asking I was just curious like how is this baseball team winning games when he doesn't have any money and when I met Billy Bean and he started to explain it to me it was both him and the idea happening at once sometimes it's like I mean going in for the new one just starts with like with the character the character and a situation like totally socially maladjusted human being who most most of human history the world would have found no particular use for goes from being worth nothing to being worth $22.5 billion in 18 months and then starts to change the world in all kinds of weird ways um Michael let's talk about your book the new one the one that you were just saying to me has caused all of this noise so you you spent a lot of time with Sam bangman freed before you started even writing the book and I was wondering whether the you you write about this guy who brilliant creates this crypto exchange it's quite a dense subject he is very nerdy did and you spend a lot of time interviewing him and then it all sort of spectacularly gets derailed and I was wondering did your narrative process to the extent that while you were interviewing him you had a kind of plan for what you were going to write right did that get derailed too by what happened to Sam got railed more than derailed you really because I I had I I went in I go in usually these things kind of groping I found some character who I find interesting and he's in some weird situation and so you had this person who child of academics clearly kind of socially troubled like he has trouble with other people um has become one of these instant billionaires and not just a billionaire like Forbes set him at$ 22.5 billion and it took him 18 months to get it and then he was going to give it all way to save Humanity so there was this odd backdrop that led me in and it was just like what is the story here and I spent well I met him in the fall October of 2021 and I started to really immerse myself in the Bahamas at FTX in January February of the next year so all the way through November when it collapses I didn't I had written a word i' played with ideas about how the book might go when we got to November and it collapsed I didn't have until it collapsed I didn't know how the book ended I didn't know where it was going and I had I had agonizing conversations with friends and with myself about whether I was even going to do it because I just didn't know it was going to work as a book and my view of him I'd always I mean one of the things that interested me was the way his mind worked he thrived he thought and maybe his true in these semi chaotic environments and he so he created them over and over and and you could see that this business before it all fell apart was like this isn't normal there's no organization chart there's no list of employees nobody has a title that bears any relationship to what they actually do people don't know who they report to or who reports to them it's just like total chaos that it isn't that surprising that something went wrong but I would never have guessed what you know IA that that's the caliber what happened surprised me because it's so stupid uh it it made it didn't doesn't if you understand the business is it doesn't make a great deal of sense what he did he he torpedoed a company that was worth $40 billion that he had own more than half of for the benefit of this hedge fund that was maybe worth nothing or not worth much and that he should have just gotten rid of long ago that that was the oddness of it that I had to sort of adapt to there's a great scene at the end of the book Let's fast forward and talk a little bit about your relationship with Sam because as you say there's been quite a lot of noise about it but there's a scene at we didn't sleep together I know you didn't sleep together and that is not what the noise has been about just to be clear okay this is a familyfriendly program um there's this but it is interesting mean I find this sometimes as a journalist you know how do you how close do you get to somebody how much does natural human empathy kick in against my reporter's instincts right I'm sure you have that you must have had that so I've had that problem with other subjects um but cuz I know how sensitive and easily wounded they might be he was unbelievably easy in this regard because he himself by his own admission lacks a lot of human feeling I knew he didn't feel anything about me like he didn't care about me he never asked me a single question about myself he never asked me what I was doing um he didn't you know he never asked me like what was it like to write Moneyball not nothing nothing no question like that no interest whatsoever in me and I sensed it so it was PR pretty easy for me not to have that much interest in his feelings or him that's interesting do you ever have that with your character you ever feel they've got close to your into your heart or into your brain and therefore it's hard to be objective about them um the answer that is yes it's that that it's almost always uh you develop a lot of feeling because there is feeling in the air after a while for the most part it doesn't those feelings don't I think affect how I write but there are times when I know I have those feelings and I have to just make sure that they're not going to bother me when I write but this wasn't one of them do you have like do you have like uh tricks sounds glip but do you have uh strategies that you fall back on to get people to open up yes you do things with them you don't just talk to them you don't just have an interview you play paddle tennis or you go on a trip or you accompany them to their meetings uh so I'm approaching this all wrong well we walked down the street and we went to the bookstore together and we've spent time together before so it's we're past that point when once but the breaking the ice thing single best job interview I ever got I ever had was a was for um leading a tour a very fancy tour group that sent kids Rich American Kids on fancy trips through Europe and they hired recent college graduates to lead them I went to New York City I this I this how I Ed this in my my in my writing life to interview with the head of the tour company his name is Robbie Brown and I get there and he goes oh my God I forgot you coming for an interview I'm so sorry removing the furniture from from this office down to this office I'll talk to you another time could you just help me move the furniture so we moved desk we moved cabinets all the rest and then he says I I'll call you in for the interview when I need to instead he called and said you got the job Flash Forward 3 months I'm in a bed in like Belgium with my fellow leader in this fancy tour operation and I said you know I SC me I never really had a job interview I just move this guy's furniture from one side of the office to the other my fellow leader said I did that too I went in and he said sorry I I forgot we and what he was doing it's so smart yeah you learn so much about people when you cooperate with them are they a team player are they a team player have they thoughts about doing things will they voice those thoughts how do they interact are generous all that a million things that you learn playing doing things with them playing games with them so I do do that uh that's one trick other trick is force myself to look look at the places where the the character is least self-conscious like your toenails you know it's that it's not your face it's like that you look at your face and you want your face to start look you're thinking that's what people are looking at right and so that that's going to be very self-conscious it's where you are I think nobody's looking where it gets really interesting and I so I try to look where nobody's looking I try to be where nobody is before you became a writer you studied art history and then you worked as a cabinet maker for a bit I worked at Wildenstein the art dealership first six months the famous moving paintings around I was a stock boy for Wildenstein but I mean minut I got the whole it was fabulous job I get to hold all the art know all what they owned they own billions and billions of dollars of Art and I got to have that interaction with the stuff then I worked as a three months Apprentice as a woodworker in New Jersey uh with a master cabinet maker then I went and led teenage girls through Europe uh on these fancy trips and then I ended up at the London School of Economics I did a masters in economics for two years but from C from art history to cabinet making to London School of Economics to do a masters in economics it's not an obvious there's no no I was gr I I I looking I knew when I graduated that I at every stop I was writing I knew I wanted to write but I didn't know how it was going to happen you you had a plan to go to Wall Street and make a ton of money um and then become a ride very sensibly by the way everyone should make money before they start right that's right yeah and you and then you sort of ditched the plan I ditched the plan two things happened one was the attention my riding was getting was going through the roof I was riding under my I had to write under my mother's maid name mainly because I was getting in trouble with the Wall Street firm CU I was writing about Wall Street kind of stuff um but that I could see oh my goodness like people will read people want what I what I'm writing that helped uh but the big thing that happened was what was I 26 been there 2 years I looked up ahead of me in the firm and these ancient 35y olds I thought would that person ever leave now to be to do anything and by the time you were 35 you were so yolked to the place and the money you you had a a whole life built around being in this place I knew that if I hung around that long I just never leave and so I it scared me so I just went pushed away I just said I got to just take that risk uh and you called your dad up oh I did and he said he thought it was insane yeah no no they just handed me I mean I mean he was a very prominent lawyer ran a law firm in New Orleans and they just paid me as much as he got paid and and he was like what on Earth I know you don't know anything I know you don't know anything about money what you just got paid a a million dollars and I said this is just the Andy they say next year is twice as much and he goes you cannot leave you cannot leave and and and um my Dad gives great advice he's he was I usually I I wasn't like most children I usually listen to my dad twice in my life I didn't and uh that was the second time and uh he was um wrong uh it was I mean I could have gone a whole different direction but the book that came out of that Liar's poker just set me up right I mean I didn't have to worry about money I didn't have to worry about what I was going to do with my life and it's been like I hope he said I was wrong I hope he one day said that I think he no I think he actually refuses to acknowledge now oh yeah know he's forgotten his investment advice is that's happens all the time I never would have said that are there ever um bits of a story that you find hard to write about you don't write about romance very much you don't write about well I mean you don't there is sex relationships generally yeah Intimate Relationships I think um the relationship between melur and the tuis in The Blind Side very interesting intimate relation and continues to be um so I've written and I've written about being a father uh I've written a book about fatherhood I've written a book about when it's my relationship I've done a lot of that right I've done i a a little book about a relationship I have with a high school coach that uh so I don't I don't have any trouble I'm not off put off by it right do I want to write a I don't know do I want to write a conventional love story I'm not disinterested in relationships but I maybe you're on to something I don't know I don't know about this I know about that theory you mentioned fatherhood M I want to ask you about Dixie all right may I yep and you've said that you want to honor her Legacy mhm how did you do that I have a peculiar way of dealing with the death of my child um and it's grown out of it's grown out of a feeling there from right from the beginning that there was a pretty serious gap between what people expected me to feel and how I felt and um I mean the most the the most obvious example was I had lots of letters from people who lost L children who proceeded to tell me that I would be living with these feelings of guilt and I thought that's strange because I just don't even feel that I feel incredible sadness I feel loss I feel and the loss I'm feeling is I'm realizing is a loss of Love uh but I don't feel guilt like I was a great dad she had a great life I we loved each other there was I didn't you know to use the sports metaphor which she would love to use we left it all on the field right so it wasn't like like okay we lost but it's not that we didn't try um so I didn't feel the things that were coming at me and in the books that were written about it and I look at it and I say that's that's not my experience and I finally concluded that I'm going I think I have to approach this in a funny way the way I approach literary subjects it's sort of like it's my vision I'm trying to purify it's my particular that everybody has an unusual circumstance a unique circumstance that you that and how you feel and how you're going to go through this is how you it's partly how you're wired it's partly what your relationship with was a person you lost it's probably how they died uh it's dependent on a lot of different things so this is going to be an individual sport me figuring out how to how to live with the grief you've spoke about gratitude which you know sounds like such a hard place to get to when you've lost a child how do you how do you get to gratitude the intensity of the pain I felt and still feel is in D direct proportion to the power of the love I felt and I didn't just love my child or all three of my children I feel the same way I liked my child I just it was just it was a it was a friendship and a parenting relationship at the same time and um I'm incredibly grateful that I felt that I felt that way like the grief is so pure like the sadness it's none of these toxic emotions there's not anger there's not guilt there's not res whatever it is the regret those kind of things that kind of eat at you sadness doesn't eat at you sadness sadness and you know tears and laughter go together you're in a different emotional space when you're in tears and laughter than you are with anger and resentment and guilt and then I'm grateful that the relationship was such that she's left me with tears and laughter uh so I don't have that much trouble getting to that spot there's a meta thing going on too though and it's I really do think so you talking about how do you get to know people and you look at their toenails as opposed to how they do their makeup um listen very carefully to the way people tell their stories and you will learn a lot about them you'll notice patterns there's all always someone who's getting shafted or there's always someone who something lucky happened to them or there's always someone who's uh being offended by people or that their patterns are the way people people think that their story is just an objective story but in fact what they're doing is imposing their kind of their their makeup their psychology on the world and generating the same story over and over my children all say they all say I'm the luckiest person they've ever known and one of the things they say is is that like whenever we go to a restaurant there's always a parking spot for you right outside the restaurant and I say you know why that is and they go why says because I look for the parking spot I assume it's going to be there most people think the spot right outside the restaurant is going to be taken but I think it's going to be there and uh it isn't always there but they think it's there an unusual amount of time for me it's just that I'm always looking for cuz I think I'm going to get it and it's I think that if you that narrative is important and I've kind of insisted on forcing The Narrative with Dixie's death and Dixie it's another way of honoring her she doesn't need need to curl up in a little ball and never do anything again she needs me to be big and brave and honor her here's to Dixie oh thank you [Music] yeah

Channel: BBC News

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Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024