DIARY
Aproducer in Hollywood called last month to tell me that my mildly scandalous memoir, Liar's Poker, would soon be made into a film. I was both delighted and uneasy. On the one hand, there's the royalties. On the other, Hollywood has a knack for making writers look silly, in ways they'd never expect. Not long after last January's sale to Warner Brothers of the film rights, the Sunday Correspondent sent an interviewer around to ask, among other things, who would play the hero (that's me). I said I wasn't sure but that the producers had mentioned Tom Cruise. A few weeks later I opened the Correspon- dent to a photograph of the Top Gun himself, and this lead sentence, which I quote from memory: 'The slightly built Lewis seriously suggests that the only actor suited to play him is Tom Cruise.' My wife laughed and pointed out that it could have been worse. There could have been a photo of me next to the one of Cruise.
The film script lay neglected on the floor beside my desk for several weeks. Who knew what might be ticking inside? I had sold with the rights all editorial con- trol. Knowing what I knew of Hollywood, I had reckoned the best thing was to take my pieces of silver and run as fast as possible in the other direction. Put a few miles be- tween myself and the scene of the crime. Well, this week I finally read the thing. It turns out that I'm not so slightly built after all. I confess I was delighted by the charm, the wit, and the physique of the main character. I liked the fact that he seems so naturally desirable to women. But I'm not sure I approve of Hollywood's predictable attempt to give my life special meaning. The script tries to turn my two years in the world of money, which were essentially a normal, healthy flirtation with nihilism, into a pious morality tale. Act I: Ambitious yuppie goes to Wall Street. Act II: Ambi- tious yuppie is compromised and deformed by the sordidness of it all. Act III: Ambi- tious yuppie mutates into a human being with feelings, and quits his job in disgust. No thinking person likes being reduced to a type, but I'm in no position to fight the characterisation. The success of the book was due to the perception of its narrator as an archetype. It's the ending I can't bear. The only moral of the financial 1980s was that there was no moral; to claim that I walked out of some conscious moral choice is to lie. On balance I think I'd rather explain to girls in bars why I don't look like Tom Cruise than to friends on Wall Street why I don't really mind what they do for a living. My concern now isn't that the film will flop — I have an alibi — but that it will succeed too well. I don't want to be the first author about whose work it is said, MICHAEL LEWIS
'Oh, the book's not bad, but if you really want a good time you should see the movie.'
There's a fair chance the world has grown weary of 1980s financial memorabi- lia. At the moment I can think of only one point that hasn't been made too often: the new respect for money on the part of British middle-class school-leavers was one of the most direct challenges ever to British middle-class values. Barristers, editors, dons and Lloyd's brokers, whose self- certainty was made to withstand a thousand working-class rebellions, were unprepared for the ridicule of their chil- dren. ('How much do they pay you Father? Ha! That's all?') By throwing money at Oxbridge graduates American banks in- cidentally fuelled intra-class strife and dis- content. At the same time they promoted inter-class solidarity, as they imbued their charges with New World egalitarian no- tions. In my old dealing room it was not uncommon to find two Englishmen ped- dling bonds side by side who would not have seen each other had they collided on the street. I submit here that the widely scorned financiers from America actually have been a force of positive social change in Britain. John Major's Committee for a Classless Society might one day raise a statue along the Embankment of a 22-year- old Anglo-Saxon wearing red braces, wav- ing a cigar with one hand and a £50 note with the other. Then again, it might not. The environmental scare of the growth years was the hole growing in the earth's ozone layer. It seems to me that there might be a silver lining in the ozone hole: it could provide a rough and ready solution to the problem of apartheid in South Africa. Every year the hole spreads from its base over Antarctica more deeply into South African airspace. Every year some uninformed tourist plops his lily-white rear end beside a swimming pool in Cape Town and fries. This year it was me. On Christ- mas morning I sat in the sun for a little more than a hour, reading Martin Chuzzle- wit. (I should point out that this was before the war, when it was socially acceptable to enjoy oneself.) By late afternoon I was purple. By evening I lay blistering on a hotel bed, distinctly unhappy, at least on the surface. Deep down, however, I was savouring the possibility of a natural solu- tion to South Africa's racial war. Presum- ably there is some quantity of ozone still hovering over South Africa, without which all white skin would roast. If that were to vanish, so would the white half of the racial problem. It would be fitting if the sun in which black skin evolved returned the land to its original black tenders.
Igrant you that it is not the best time to be seeing hope in environmental disaster. It sounds immoral, and since the war began all sensible people have been doing their best to look grimly moral. The important thing to realise is that the grimness does not imply any genuine self-sacrifice. George Bush set the moral pace for this war when he stomped grimly around his golf course in Maine while the enemy was digging into the Kuwaiti desert. The idea of cancelling the Super Bowl for the sake of propriety, for example, is met with the same sort of bogus rationalisation Bush made for staying the (golf) course. The game could not be played merely because the citizenry wished to watch it, but be- cause.Saddam had to be shown he couldn't keep America down. It was a convincing sign that frowning had become fashionable when the trend-sniffing American maga- zine, Vanity Fair, cancelled the party it had planned next week to celebrate its first British edition. Even those who had de- clined the invitation (like me) received notes last week saying that the party was inappropriate in these 'grim times'. Of course it would be wicked to suggest that the party was cancelled not because of a delicate social conscience at Vanity Fair, but because none of its American execu- tives had the guts to fly across the Atlantic.
Paul Johnson will resume his press column next week. 'Leaking pipe madam? Fire a missile at it and I'll be round in the morning.'
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