Writers are great shirkers, as everyone suspects and all writers know. Our patron saint is Bartleby of Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, whose great refusal, “I would prefer not to,” is our battle cry against the world of workaday drudgery. For why work when you can write? Of course, it takes discipline and craft, those … Continue reading Wastrels and Layabouts: Six Novels with Charming, Workshy Anti-heroes by Peter Mann