By the American novelist, essayist and poet, widely esteemed as one of the most important figures in American literature and best remembered today for his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851).
His short story „Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) is among his most important pieces, and has been considered a precursor to Existentialist and Absurdist literature. It tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. One day Bartleby declines the assignment his employer gives him with the inscrutable „I would prefer not.” The utterance of this remark sets off a confounding set of actions and behavior, making the unsettling character of Bartleby one of Melville's most enigmatic and unforgettable creations.
„I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.
Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by… (tovább)
By the American novelist, essayist and poet, widely esteemed as one of the most important figures in American literature and best remembered today for his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851).
His short story „Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) is among his most important pieces, and has been considered a precursor to Existentialist and Absurdist literature. It tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. One day Bartleby declines the assignment his employer gives him with the inscrutable „I would prefer not.” The utterance of this remark sets off a confounding set of actions and behavior, making the unsettling character of Bartleby one of Melville's most enigmatic and unforgettable creations.
„I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.
Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City’s Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, „I would prefer not to”?
The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.
