Michael Lewis on baseball and writing

I sure liked The this interview with Michael 'Moneyball' Lewis (via kottke). A few quotes:

If there are problems it’s in the souls of the writers. To me the biggest corrupting influence in this country in the production of literature and journalism is the attempt to make it an academic subject—the creative writing classes, journalism schools. That’s the wrong approach. It’s an attempt to establish a career path for writers. And also to take the risk out of it and say if you do X, Y, and Z, then you get this plum. I think the best stuff is done by lone rangers.

I think about it but I haven’t found myself so frustrated by nonfiction that I need to turn to fiction. And the screenplays are fiction. So I do have a fictional component to my life. It’s very hard because I do feel I can say an awful lot in the context of a nonfiction book. I know that I can get to a reader that way. I don’t really feel a need to write a novel. I can’t say that won’t change.

I used to think that I had to write a novel. It was something I really should do. But now I don’t think that way—if I wanted to do it, I should try it, but only if I wanted to because it was likely to be painful.