As the above photo reveals, I did indeed talk with Michael Lewis at BookExpo. Unfortunately, it appears that we didn’t get audio for this three minute conversation. This was due to a regrettable technical glitch with the equipment. But in my defense, this interview occurred on a day in which I didn’t really intend to do interviews. But the Norton people suggested it. And I had the equipment on me. And I had precisely 90 seconds to get everything out of my backpack. It seemed a good idea at the time.
Mr. Lewis, known predominantly for his financial writing, has a new book called Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. The book has cobbled together numerous journals that Mr. Lewis kept as he became a father. I asked Mr. Lewis if, over the course of this journal writing, he had viewed fatherhood in the same manner in which he viewed denominated bills, or whether he possibly arranged the book in chapters that lined up to specific monetary units. Mr. Lewis became a little confused by this, but he denied that he had set out to reconsider fatherhood in ones, fives, and tens. When I asked Mr. Lewis if his book had mentioned any dead presidents, he said that the book did not. I did not understand why Mr. Lewis dropped eye contact with me as the interview progressed. I thought we were having a pleasant conversation. Perhaps his throat was parched and he needed a bottle of water.
But let me assure you that Mr. Lewis does take fatherhood very seriously. And anyone who needs a serious book about fatherhood may want to consider purchasing Michael Lewis’s Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood for the family home. I thank Mr. Lewis and Norton for the three-minute conversation, and I apologize that this post serves as an accidental guide to a conversation in which I did not get audio.
I should also observe that Michael Lewis’s shirt was somewhat liberally unbuttoned. Apparently, fatherhood is something in which your neck may require additional contact with the air. I sincerely hope that there is a chapter in Home Game that explains Mr. Lewis’s sartorial decision.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (