'Work' in literature

The workday proves dull not only to the Computer Programmer, but to the novelist. When there's war to attend to, and heartbreak, and class struggle and familial strife and rage against the dying light, why would one preoccupy oneself, when endeavouring to write fiction, with the nine-to-five? Work does play an important role in literature. It just doesn't mirror the importance or merit the attention it gets in real life.
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Contemporary readers like the Marketing Consultant should shudder to the core at [Bartleby's] display of existential freedom.