Work and Literature

Waggish has some interesting thoughts on work and what literature makes of work.

But it seems that few writers has picked up the slack, leaving the academic left and the Straussian right to promulgate archetypal portrayals of the western employee to their various audiences. The topic of work is too significant to be left to theorists; Studs Terkel's Working is a better map of these territories than Marx. The area should belong to literature, which can provide more personal and emotional narratives for it. But literature has yet to stake a serious claim.

I have often wondered about the paucity of stories and novels whose foreground is the normal everyday working world that most people experience. I have had jobs that felt dramatic to me, dramatic in the sense that the difference between success and failure meant a lot to me both emotionally and financially.

I believe I read somewhere that the most common place for people to meet lovers and spouses is at work. An office romance has its extremely emotional moments, and all the emotion does not happen while between the sheets.

Maybe, I am reading the wrong kind of fiction? Let me know how to get on track if I am.