I wrote a novel. I've forgotten. I've forgotten I wrote a novel. Tells you how bad it was.

What happened was Lyra's poker came out and everyone was saying you have all of the

gifts of a novelist and the problem was maybe that was true up to a point but the point

where it wasn't true is I had no ability to make things up. So when you can't make things

up, you got problems as a novelist. The thing is there's no structure when you're writing

fixed it because you just can do anything. You just do anything. I know.

And then to change it, you could just make it totally different. So how do you know

what's good and what's not? It's battling.

Here is my contract with Hodder and Stouten for a novel that was going to be called Tokyo

Rocks. And it says it's marvelous to have this novel on board. Oh my God. I wrote a hundred

a couple of hundred pages. The research department felt hollow when he arrived with everyone

still in the morning meeting. The offices along the padded corridor were as dark and

barren and full of the loneliness, loneliness of empty ambition as the cleaning ladies

had left them the night before. The loneliness of ambition could have been a title instead

of Liars Poker. I'm Michael Lewis and welcome to other people's money, a Liars Poker companion.

This is our fifth and final episode. We're going to call it Tokyo Rocks. The name of the

novel I think we're all a little bit relieved that I never finished. It's funny how we

tend to forget about failure. We remember the successes and we look back on our life

as this chain of the things that work. But the things that didn't work are actually

the things that guided you on the path that worked. In some ways they're more important

than the things that did work. They channel us. They give us the guardrails that define

our career and help us to kind of move forward. That's why I wanted to talk to George Saunders.

...