Kurt Vonnegut has Killgore Trout, who is basically Kurt as a bitter curmudgeon who writes sci-fi schlock that only a dozen people read. Hilariously those people tend to be the most powerful people on Earth, but it still never leads to any success in his life.
I’m sure it never will, but Tiger Moody’s Induction of The Sycophant is a great look at morality and bias, and how we are all blind to our own biases and bigotries and how it makes the good we want to do fall flat.