Formerly itinerant journalist Mike Sager runs an independent publishing house from his Bird Rock home The Not-So-Lonely Hedonist
by Jackie Bryant
“YOU SHOULD CALL THIS PIECE ‘The Not So Lonely Hedonist,’” says journalist, author, and independent book publisher Mike Sager as we look at the ocean from his home in Bird Rock. He’s referring to the title of one of his essay compilations, The Lonely Hedonist . It’s filled with stories about other people, but the title is an apt description of Mike. If anyone else in the world tried to tell me how to title my piece, I’d have bristled. But one of the quirks of writers writing about writers (also why we typically avoid it) is that it becomes a collaborative process. Collaboration is something the now-publisher knows well. Though if someone asked him, he’d say he’s been going it alone for years. He moved to La Jolla in 1997 from Washington D.C., where he began his storied journalism career in 1978 at The Washington Post . “I was a rogue hire,” he says, downplaying his success, per usual. Sager was just the copy boy who freelanced on the side. But after 11 months, he broke a story on abuses in the Department of Agriculture and, instantly, famed editor Bob Woodward promoted him.
What followed is a long, still-active career writing for titles like Rolling Stone , Esquire (where he’s been a contributing editor for 20 years), and many others, including this magazine. At Rolling Stone , Sager was the rag’s contributing editor who wrote about drugs. He got paid actual American dollars to smoke crack with Rick James and write about the experience. But he also ghost-wrote for Hunter S. Thompson when the gonzo wordsmith was too inebriated to file copy on his own. Sager’s since become one of history’s best chroniclers of people—often the world’s most interesting people. He has an uncanny ability to pick up on the quirky things they do, identify the fascinating contradictions they inhabit that make them both relatable and also utterly foreign. To that point, it’s no wonder he’s especially drawn to writing about celebrities, sports, and various drug cultures. Sager’s pieces are so vivid, the characters so alive, that it’s no surprise more than a dozen of his articles have been turned into films. Ever heard of Boogie Nights ? That was based off
40 AUGUST 2022
PHOTOS BY ARIANA DREHSLER
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