Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer.
I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune and a new life narrative. The book I wrote was called “ Liar’s Poker.” It sold a million copies. Had I waited until I was 36, I would never have done it. I knew what intellectual passion felt like - because I’d felt it here, at Princeton - and I wanted to feel it again. “Stay at Salomon Brothers 10 years, make your fortune, and then write your books,” he said. “You might just want to think about that,” he said. There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I told him I was going to quit this job that now promised me millions of dollars to write a book for an advance of 40 grand. Wall Street had become so unhinged that it was paying recent Princeton graduates who knew nothing about money small fortunes to pretend to be experts about money. Now I had something to write about: Salomon Brothers.
#Fortune cookie near me professional
A year and a half later Salomon Brothers was handing me a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars to give advice about derivatives to professional investors. When I got there I was assigned, almost arbitrarily, to the very best job in which to observe the growing madness: they turned me into the house expert on derivatives. But Salomon Brothers happened to be where Wall Street was being reinvented-into the place we have all come to know and love. I knew next to nothing about Salomon Brothers. She more or less forced her husband to give me a job. One night I was invited to a dinner, where I sat next to the wife of a big shot at a giant Wall Street investment bank, called Salomon Brothers. I wrote at nights, without much effect, mainly because I hadn’t the first clue what I should write about. I did what everyone does who has no idea what to do with themselves: I went to graduate school. “Never try to make a living at it.”Īnd I didn’t - not really.
And so after about 45 minutes I finally said, “So. I listened and waited for Professor Childs to say how well written my thesis was. It was just a few yards from here, in McCormick Hall. Or, to put it differently: to write books. When I handed it in I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: to write senior theses. God knows what Professor Childs actually thought of it, but he helped me to become engrossed. The thesis tried to explain how the Italian sculptor Donatello used Greek and Roman sculpture - which is actually totally beside the point, but I’ve always wanted to tell someone. My adviser was a truly gifted professor, an archaeologist named William Childs. It happened while working on my senior thesis. But at Princeton, studying art history, I felt the first twinge of literary ambition. I didn’t write for the Prince, or for anyone else.
I graduated from Princeton without ever having published a word of anything, anywhere. I want you to understand just how mysterious careers can be before you go out and have one yourself. I’m going to explain, briefly, how that happened. Yet somehow I have wound up rich and famous. I was almost certainly less prepared for the marketplace than most of you. Even then this was regarded as an act of insanity. By kicking me out.Īt that moment I was sure of only one thing: I was of no possible economic value to the outside world. Here I’d gone and given them four of the best years of my life and this is how they thanked me for it. I’m told you’re meant to be excited, perhaps even relieved, and maybe all of you are. What I do remember, vividly, is graduation. I must have listened to some older person share his life experience. The next time you look around a church and see everyone dressed in black it’ll be awkward to cheer. Above all, Members of the Princeton Class of 2012. Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, Boomerang, and Liar’s Poker, gives a commencement speech on the role of luck.
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