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In his podcast, Michael Lewis described his job as finding the expert in a topic and then making their understanding legible to the reader. Going Infinite demon
by collinmcnulty 3y ago
In his podcast, Michael Lewis described his job as finding the expert in a topic and then making their understanding legible to the reader. Going Infinite demonstrates the weakness of this approach, which is that he is entirely too credulous and sympathetic once he has picked his “expert”. I have enjoyed a lot of his writing, so I hope in the future he makes more space for changing his initial impression and critique of his subject, perhaps he can start by reading The Undoing Project by noted author Michael Lewis.
- rjtavares 3y agoI like Matt Levine's take on Going Infinite: > Many of the reviews that I have read of the book complain that Lewis does not sufficiently explain that Bankman-Fried is Guilty and Bad, Actually, but that is not the book that he wanted to write or the one I want to read. He wanted to understand and explain Bankman-Fried’s psychology and tell a good story. If you want to read a moral condemnation of crypto theft, you can get that anywhere. You go to Michael Lewis for character and story. Michael Lewis does characters, not subjects.
- cmcaleer 3y agoI have this problem with a lot of media in general these days, both fiction and non-fiction. Although it's enjoying a huge cultural resurgence today among young people, I feel like if American Psycho were to be made today, Bateman would have to be made comically evil with his faux liberal (to use the language of Bankman-Fried) 'woke shibboleths' left behind lest readers get mad that Bateman is being used as a tool to bash those beliefs -- ignoring the interesting commentary that Bateman actually uses it for status within his social circle and as a disguise for the person he really is. You see this a lot in coverage of very contentious issues too. I'm purposefully not naming any directly here (I'm thinking of at least 3 varied topics where this is particularly bad), but there are a lot of very complicated, hot-button issues where if you read any article that goes against the 'established' narrative in a nuanced way, there are usually several paragraphs of throat-clearing where the writer feels the need to go "We all know x is important, for reasons 1, 2, and 3".
- barnabee 3y ago> that is not the book that he wanted to write or the one I want to read Exactly this.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoThen perhaps his books belong in the fiction section?
- truculent 3y agoOkay, sure. But TFA isn’t about Lewis not condemning the Guilty and Bad SBF, it’s about Lewis falling short on his own terms. > Lewis paints a portrait of Sam as singularly motivated by doing the EV-maximizing thing despite the social and emotional costs inflicted on others. But the real Sam in this story is not taking a hit to his reputation in order to maximize expectancy; he’s carelessly burning expectancy in the process of cultivating a reputation for punishing and humiliating his competition. The “blind side” is that we don’t get the full illustration of SBF’s character, because it’s filtered through Lewis’s credulous reporting, lack of access to certain key players, and limited attention to the financial details of what was going on. This is particularly disappointing because these are precisely the things that Lewis is known for doing so well.
- bambax 3y agoBut the story is wrong, and so is the character! SBF is both a fraudster and a fraud -- not an altruistic genius.