In a manifesto (er, “ideas piece”) about the importance of the workplace in writing, Alain de Botton calls on contemporary writers to write about work. “If a proverbial alien landed on earth,” he says, “and tried to figure out what human beings did with their time simply on the evidence of the literature sections of a typical bookstore, he or she would come away thinking that we devote ourselves almost exclusively to leading complex relationships, squabbling with our parents, and occasionally murdering people.” Yet work, according to de Botton, is at the core of who we are. So why don’t we write about it?
De Botton points to non-disclosure agreements, young writers’ lack of experience in the workplace and a misguided belief that there aren’t any interesting stories to be written about a cubicle-filled existence. Maybe. I’d guess that many writers don’t write about work because it’s not where there passion lies, because it’s not at the core of who they are, because they live for being able to go home and conjure up stories about things that actually interest them, not for getting yelled at over the phone by spoiled, entitled customers while plugging data no one will ever use into a computer. Why would we want to urge writers to write about something that bores them? That, I think, would lead to stories with a passionless voice, which to me, at least, is the very definition of “bad literature.”
I might be bringing my own shit to this.
