Work is central to literature

[Monte Davis]

(after reading the rest of the Guardian article)

Maybe the notion that work gets less-than-proportionate attention in fiction
is a perceptual illusion. Fiction is highly selective about *everything* in
life, holding our interest by stitching together moments of heightened
change, perception, resolution -- and building with them meaning-structures
of a clarity we very rarely attain in looking at our own lives. Density such
as that of Ulysses -- where it's possible to believe you're partaking of
*everything* in Bloom's consciousness that day -- is rare. 

It's just that most of us have our nose rubbed each day in the actual hourly
extent of our work, much more explicitly than we have our noses rubbed in
how long we spend sleeping or walking or eating or grooming or staring at
pixels. So the divergence between "prominence of activity X in daily life"
and "prominence of activity X" in fiction" -- which in fact is always there
-- is perceived in especially high contrast where work is concerned.