What Is the Blind Side About?

Sam Fragoso asked why Michael Oher pressed for the money, given that Lewis had gotten to know him. Lewis says he can understand why Oher would feel a dollar in Sean Tuohy's pocket is a dollar out of Oher's pocket. Oher had an incredibly tough first fifteen or sixteen years. Beyond the hardship, Lewis says he does not know, and it is not his place to answer. The sad part is that, in the moment, it was beautiful to watch people seem to love each other and have the arrangement work.

Asked what the story is about, Lewis says it is about character and situation. People tend to attribute to a person what is really about a situation. Change the situation and the whole future changes. He describes a six-foot-five, three-hundred-and-twenty-pound kid of fifteen or sixteen, born to play left tackle in the NFL, who can still be missed by the world. If a kid in that spot can be missed, Lewis asks, who cannot? Move him from the direst poverty into extreme privilege, including two surrogate parents fighting for him at school, and the outcomes start to change. Lewis says the story was about the change, he thinks it is true, and the fight since has muddied it. He cannot do anything about it. The characters he writes about go on and lead other lives.