from the Guardian

Fail better

What makes a good writer? Is writing an expression of
self, or, as TS Eliot argued, 'an escape from
personality'? Do novelists have a duty? Do readers?
Why are there so few truly great novels? Zadie Smith
on literature's legacy of honourable failure

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1989004,00.html