Emily St. John Mandel: belief

Transcript context

…We’ll get to that book, but please continue. That book — this is not to denigrate the book. I believe in my work, but I’ve always been aware that there are any number of books in the world that were at least as good as Station Eleven, if not better, that didn’t sell nearly as many copies. There’s just an incredible level of luck, even in “earned money.” Yeah, it did always feel like a lottery ticket to me. Then, by the same token, I see kids who are raised in these upper-middle-class families that allows for, say, SAT tutoring to get into a really good college, say, go from there into the internship, from there into a really well-paying job. They’re earning their money, but they had lottery tickets too. It’s not clear to me that it feels very different to earn your money versus inheriting it. Either way, there’s just such an element of luck involved. Do you think the very wealthy now feel a bit lost during coronavirus time because they’re used to having these large household staffs around, and now, perhaps, they’re afraid to keep those people in the house, and everything’s suddenly very empty and quiet?…

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