Writer's Fallout Shelter

No. Bartleby the Scrivener was written by Melville. The Catbird Seat is a much more modern tale of the everyday man. Much less boring.

I'm glad you brought up "the universal." I was going to start a thread about universal themes and how we come up with them.

I don't think anyone creates a character out of nothing. The only way to do that would be if we had never interacted with anyone other than ourselves, if we had lived life with absolutely no human contact. We're all the products of the people, real and fictional, we have met. Imagination doesn't exist in a vacuum.