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To: Bob Kim who wrote (142587)	5/30/2002 1:53:47 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

Bob, have you ever thought about writing a book? >>Back in the days when Henry Blodget was Merrill Lynch's top Internet analyst, he could be found in the office at 6 a.m., writing research reports in a suit and tie. Now his days are less hectic. He rises at about seven. He puts on a T-shirt and shorts. He drinks two cups of "high octane" tea and checks his e-mail, but avoids the newspaper. Blodget recently told someone he finds the news "too weird and depressing." It's probably better that way. Once a Wall Street star, Blodget is now a symbol of everything that went wrong on the Street during the tech stock boom. He was singled out by New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer for publicly touting stocks that he disparaged in e-mails. The SEC is conducting an inquiry. He is the focus of multiple lawsuits filed against Merrill by angry investors. The only time Blodget makes a public statement these days is when he gives a deposition. Blodget left Merrill in December with an estimated $5 million severance payment. He's gagged by his old firm from talking to the press. But Blodget still has plenty to say--in fact, he's writing his memoirs, which Random House hopes to publish in the summer of 2003. "The book," says his editor, Jonathan Karp, "is a variation on a classic theme--coming of age in New York City. It happens to be set on Wall Street during the Internet revolution, and that will certainly be an attraction to certain readers, but it's our hope that this book will define an era, as other literary memoirs have done." It won't be the first time Blodget has tried to write a book. Before he landed his first Wall Street job in 1994, Blodget's ambition was to be an author. His friends included Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, and New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar. He toiled at low-paying editorial jobs. And in his spare time, he wrote a book. But it was never published. Instead, his struggles became fodder for his more successful peers. In her self-help book, Radical Sanity--Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women, Wurtzel describes an unnamed friend who "went from menial job to meaningless job for years" before landing on Wall Street. "Let me assure you that this friend was a complete loser for several years," Wurtzel writes. "Believe me, he was truly pathetic." It was common knowledge in Blodget's circle that Wurtzel's friend was Henry. To this same circle, Blodget's rise on Wall Street was astonishing. To them he was a Wall Street version of Chauncey Gardener, the illiterate gardener portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie Being There whose empty-headed statements are mistaken for profound wisdom. His Wall Street friends had more respect for his abilities but were no less amazed by his good fortune. "Two years before this he was barely making enough money to buy bread," says one. "Now all of a sudden he's Britney Spears." As it happens, this may not be the greatest time for Blodget to spill everything. Securities lawyers say he risks antagonizing law-enforcement officials if he publishes a memoir as long as he's under investigation. However, now that Merrill has reached a $100 million settlement with Spitzer, at least one cloud has lifted. Indeed, people who've talked to Blodget recently say he doesn't seem particularly worried. A friend who ran into him not long ago says the former analyst looked fit from frequent trips to the gym and was excited about his book. "He seemed to me to be in quite good spirits, considering he had a baby on the way and was the target of two major investigations," the friend says. So maybe, in the end, being an Internet analyst got Blodget what he always really wanted: a book someone will actually publish. fortune.com