Just read a really thought-provoking article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell comparing prodigies and late bloomers. Much of the article focuses on Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which came out last year from Ecco/Harper Perennial. Though I am a big fan of the book, I never knew that Ben was a late bloomer who quit a job as a lawyer to toil for nearly twenty years before releasing his first book.