Part One: Umberto Eco's Antilibrary, or How We Seek Validation, Chapter 2: Yevgenia's Black Swan; Chapter 3: The Speculator and the Prostitute Summary and Analysis

Summary

Chapter 2 was a very short three-page description of a novelist, Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova, who brought forth a new literary form. She had been pushed away by publishers who could not understand what the novel was about, for whom it was written, or what genre bookstores could use to put the book on a shelf. She tried to take a writing workshop and came out of the experience entirely disgusted with the literary world.

Then a small publishing house decided to take a chance on the book. Over several years, it gained an audience and the respect of literary critics. Taleb pointed to...