Why Does Michael Lewis Put the Reader Ahead of the Subject?

Michael Lewis says time with a subject is not a little time. It is eighteen months, or whatever the book takes, and then he moves on. A book has a limited ability to change a life. When a movie gets made, the person becomes the character on the screen, and the role changes the life around them.

Sam Fragoso asked whether the aftermath changes how Lewis works. Lewis says he still does not write books so they will become movies. Some became movies by accident, with his consent. The books get sold, and the movies almost never get made. He has been selling them for decades.

A thought he dislikes still comes in, and he tries to bat it aside. He does not spend much time on consequences for the people he writes about. He tries to get the story down, asking whether it is true to his experience of the person and the situation, not how it will play. Sometimes he thinks the person will have to live with the portrait, and he pushes the thought away. His responsibility is to the reader: get the truth onto the page so the reader can evaluate it. The little voice about consequences is louder than it used to be. On the way in, he can open every door, but people have groomed themselves first. After eighteen months the pretense falls away. Once a subject sees they can run but they cannot hide, the grooming does not seem to have much effect.