How Does Michael Lewis Get Close Enough to Draw Someone?

Sam Fragoso read from the New York Times Magazine essay Michael Lewis wrote in 1999, after writing about his friend John McCain. The essay is I Liked a Pol. Lewis says he watched McCain, got to know him, and wrote him from the inside, the way a novelist writes a character. Most people liked McCain, so the effect was strongly positive. McCain told Lewis the piece was the most important thing ever written about him, because it opened eyes in the press corps.

Lewis reads the argument. Most writing about Clinton, and about other big-time politicians, came from a strange distance. Reporters seemed content with bleacher seats, a useful place to analyze and pour doubt, and a poor place to know anyone. A Washington Post reporter told him the rule when he got to Washington: it is okay to talk to politicians, and you are just not supposed to like them. If you are not supposed to like them, Lewis says, you will not get close, and if you never get close, you will never draw them well.

He wanted the reporting he loved as a kid. George Plimpton joins the Detroit Lions to write Paper Lion. Hunter Thompson becomes a Hell's Angel to write about the Hell's Angels. John Hersey writes about Harry Truman, and the two go into a steam room naked. Lewis says the reader gets to know the character, which is why the books sell, and it is the experience he wants when he reads.