Was Michael Lewis Too Close to Sam Bankman-Fried?

Sam Fragoso asked about Going Infinite and the early assault on the Sam Bankman-Fried book. One critique was that sympathy, and the time spent close to Bankman-Fried, kept Michael Lewis from a clear-eyed evaluation. Lewis says no. The evaluation matched any other subject. What differed was that many people already held a hard opinion. Bankman-Fried went from everybody's favorite crypto boy toy to everybody's favorite villain: the it kid worth thirty billion dollars, venture capitalists wanting to hand him money, politicians wanting to be his friend, and then a crook. Lewis says the turn embarrassed people who had had their hands in his pockets and then needed to distance themselves. He had watched the change and still thought a very interesting character was there.

Fragoso asked whether Lewis watched from inside the room, on a couch while Bankman-Fried sat at a computer, and whether Lewis befriended the parents. Lewis agrees, on both. He gets to know a person, watches, spends time, and does things with them. He interviews people who work for them, people they fired, people they have had problems with, and people who taught them in school. The job is to let the reader get to know the person. A reader who arrives with a superficial hatred will be irritated at having to know them. Going Infinite did great, Lewis says, the book is going to be a movie, and it is the bravest book he has written, because he knew people were going to be angry.