The older I get, the longer I do academic and intellectual work, the more suspicious I am of concepts like brilliance and genius. Even in fields like music, philosophy, and math, fields that can reward bright young stars, I'm struck how much of it really is about consistent work.

I've always been fascinated, for example, by debates about Coleridge and his writing of Kubla Khan (e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25599673?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents) not so much because of what really happened but because of what it reveals about the fascination with sui generis brilliance.

. @shamuskhan's book Privilege is really great for a Bourdieusian angle on the cultivation of ease, which is another piece of how "brilliance" is supposed to work, and something Bourdieu is obviously quite interested in as well.