Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 - (Page 64)

… because New Orleanians worship their ancestors and eat if we can find a solution. Do you have to use your name?” I a lot of rice. actually didn’t care one way or the other, and so I said, So you have this very archaic city of New Orleans that is “No.” He said, “Well, let’s find a pseudonym.” steeped in another time and has not transitioned and we So the pseudonym we went with was Diana Bleeker. My have seen the economic consequences of this which of mother’s maiden name was Diana Bleeker Monroe. I was course have been been magnified by Katrina. But Michael, Diana Bleeker for about nine months. Diana Bleeker wrote then you went to Princeton, a very old-line school, went whatever Diana Bleeker wanted to write and no one ever into art history — about as traditional an academic connected up the dots between me and Diana Bleeker. It got discipline as possible — and then you leave the reservation. very close sometimes because the articles were so on point There’s a great moment when you’re in London working at to my life there that they were being distributed around me. Salomon Brothers and you start Things I wrote for the New Republic on writing these articles. One of the the Salomon Brothers trading floor, The most it would interest me senior partners from New York flies people were cackling at them, but no over and they want to know who this one had any idea that I had written is what a novelist would be mole is in the organization. them. Diana Bleeker got a call one day interested in, the human Lewis: Can I tell this story? from a man named Ned Chase. Do drama of it in the places in Because it was slightly more dramatic you know Chevy Chase, the actor? than that. I thought I was going to His dad was the editor at Simon & America where ambition is pursue my writing career at the same Schuster. He had found out who I was fiercest. The money is just time I was making this money at because when Michael Kinsley was the mechanical rabbit at the Salomon Brothers. So I would go the editor of The New Republic he home from Salomon Brothers and refused to let me write under Diana greyhound racetrack. The write at night, write on the weekends. Bleeker’s name unless he put “Diana rabbit’s not that interesting. I was writing for the Economist, for the Bleeker is a pseudonym.” So Ned Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, and found out who Diana Bleeker was, the New Republic. I wrote an editorial, one of the big op-eds called me, and offered me a book contract. That’s when I in the Wall Street Journal. The thrust of it was basically that realized that I could make a living and there was a book for investment bankers are overpaid. At the bottom it said, me to write. So yes, it caused some trouble for me at first Michael Lewis is an associate with Salomon Brothers in because you really weren’t allowed to write those things London. I didn’t think anything of it. I really didn’t. I just while you were at Salomon Brothers. thought, free speech, right? You can say what you want. So Sartisky: This is beyond revealing the inner workings, it I had said that. I came in in the morning and waiting for me was a 20th century version of Dickens and the counting at my desk was Charlie McFey who was the head of house. If you’ve read these books, Michael’s capturing of Salomon Brothers International and who had given me my the character, the freneticism, the phenomenon of Liar’s job and was kind of a pal at that point because Jacob Poker itself, basically, who’s got the big brass ones? It’s Rothschild was handing over so much dough to Salomon really watching this unholy display of testosterone, but Brothers. He said, “You caused a real problem.” I said, entirely directed towards the mission of profit at any cost, “how big a problem?” He says, “the board of directors has never any consideration of consequence. You delineate this been on a conference call about what to do” because the with absolutely scathing insight, both into the characters of thing was reprinted everywhere. Every local newspaper the people who are committing these acts as well as the bought the rights to re-run it and it was all over the place. nature of the work itself, even though you don’t appear He said, “You can’t do this. We have offices filled with possessed of moral outrage. people to prevent this kind of thing from happening.” And Lewis: It’s funny. Because I didn’t think I wasn’t I said, “well, I’m possessed of moral outrage and I didn’t have a lot of gonna write, and if I tolerance for those who were. I wrote the book and I can’t write I’ll just thought, “I just want the people to enjoy this story.” This is quit.” He said, a very weird experience I’ve had, and a very weird “don’t quit. Let’s see experience the financial world has had. If someone doesn’t 64 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2007-08

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Katrina: Days of Terror, Months of Anguish Paintings by Rolland Golden The Historic New Orleans Collection The Great Ouachita River Flood of 1932 Jazz Notes Louisiana Architecture Louisiana: Where Land Meets Water Louisiana State Museum Through A Lens Sharply: An Interview with Michael Lewis MR-GO: A “miracle” mired in controversy Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans: An Autopsy Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

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