The Grind

It's strange, when you think about it. The vast majority of most people's time is spent at their work. It is how they define themselves. "What do you do?" is a question about your career, not what type of person you are. But it is the rare work of fiction which describes the dramas and emotions of a normal day at work. Why?

"The workday proves dull," says the Guardian. People in the Western world simply don't have interesting jobs any more. We are not Hemingway's soldiers or Melville's sailors. Members of the Western middle class are increasingly paper pushers. We work in offices, tap away on computers, and produce increasingly intangible products. We do it, but have no illusions that it is worthy of high art. You're not going to find many passages in The Great Gatsby where Nick Carraway ducks out for a bathroom break, either.

But let's talk about Gatsby. As the article notes, the fact of work plays a major role in many great pieces of fiction. Nick Carraway meets Gatsby because he has moved East to try his hand in the bond business. Gatsby as a hard-working, driven man is a vital contrast to the independently wealthy Tom, who "drift[s] on forever...seeking the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game." The fact that the characters work, or do not work, is important. Their actual work, however, is kept from the page. Much better to focus on the exception to the everyday routine -- the grand parties, the romances, the murders.

Is there a way around this dilemma? Can a writer portray the hours between 9am and 5pm without straying into monotony and boredom? The Guardian article offers one possibility -- a return to the fantastic, such as in Kafka's The Fly. When all else fails, a story is always enlivened by turning the protagonist into a bug.

But Kafka's Gregor Samsa doesn't just experience the problems of a man turned into an insect; more importantly, he has the problems of an insect trying to turn into a man. He buzzes about frantically, full of worries and insecurities. What to do? How will he provide for his family? The problems are the same that people experience every day, as is the just-south-of-panic emotional state.

Kafka successfully explained the fears, desires, and perspective of the working man in Gregor -- but without describing hours of compiling Excel spreadsheets. He distilled the essence of a situation in such a way that allows the reader to understand its drama. And, in the end, that is what fiction is all about.