![]() ![]() 2 They do it because they have a constellation of family members-and maybe a dog-who depend on them, or because they’re just trying to pay their own bills. A third of Americans now say they are in the lower classes, and many are working at jobs in which their livelihoods are determined by bosses with their own bosses to please. The fact is, Americans live at work, often doing jobs that are tedious, demeaning, and pointless, not to mention dangerous and poorly paid. ![]() 1 But in much of modern American fiction, a job is merely a setting, handy for a narrative jolt (a promotion! a pink slip! an affair!) or a patina of verisimilitude. Sure, you can name some terrific exceptions. Or blame it on a conviction, among readers and writers alike, that the workaday world is plain old boring. Blame it on an overwhelming literary consensus that there’s something sullying about implicating oneself in capitalism, even if it’s to document it. Blame it on an MFA system that shunts wannabe writers into the academy before they have time to scuff their sneakers in a break room or callous their hands on a broom handle. ![]()
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