Ah yes, we all like to think that destiny, talent and hard work lead to artistic success. But these qualities aren’t the determining factor when it comes to literature. “What determines a work’s longevity is in many cases an accumulation of unliterary accidents in the lives of individuals years and sometimes even decades after the writer has gone unto the white creator. ‘The race is not to the swift,’ Ecclesiastes tell us, ‘nor the battle to the strong … but time and chance happen to them all.’ Nowhere is this truer than literary survival.” – Boston Review