It’s good to be Michael Lewis

Jessica Pressler of New York magazine profiles business journalist Michael Lewis, the author of “The Big Short” and a Bloomberg News columnist.

Pressler writes, “Lewis is often referred to as a business writer, and this is sort of true, in that his narratives usually focus on some kind of market, be it for bonds or baseball players. But he’s a business writer only in the same way that Malcolm Gladwell is a business writer. What most interests him are people and how they behave. He tends to favor stories about mavericks — like the Tuohys, Beane, Whitney, and Steve Eisman, the eccentric short-seller star of The Big Short — smart people who identify gaps of logic and market inefficiencies, and take advantage of them.

“He can write about these kinds of people with such skill in part because he is one of them. At a time of peril for his industry, Lewis has managed to build what amounts to a personal empire of long-form journalism, with a Warren Buffett-like collection of brands and eye for the next big thing. ‘He’s got good instincts for the individual story and for the broader picture of where that story belongs,’ says Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. ‘The big story of the day is the world financial crisis, and he’s the most kick-ass business writer out there.’

“His aptitude for translating and enlivening financial concepts has made him an indispensable observer of the crisis: In May 2010, Politico reported that The Big Short had been name-checked on the official Senate record at least fifteen times since its publication just two months before, and that Hill staffers had been calling Lewis at home for advice. ‘I was watching television the other day, and Barney Frank was quoting him like he was a Nobel laureate,’ Whitney tells me. This spring, Lewis was invited to Washington to speak to the Democratic Caucus. Afterward, senators came up to him, fanlike, asking for autographs. ‘I have to believe that’s how a lot of those senators learned about the crisis,’ says Whitney.

“This week, he’ll publish a follow-up, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, a collection of hilarious reported essays he wrote for Vanity Fair that finger Icelandic elves, greedy Greek monks, and a German obsession with shit as a few of the culprits for the European economic collapse. With the continent in an economic meltdown nobody seems to really understand, these witty ethnographic studies have been received like Rosetta stones. It will be no surprise if senators are soon consulting them, too.”

Read more here.