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Bartleby the Scrivener
 
 

Bartleby the Scrivener (Paperback)

by Herman Melville (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 13.00
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Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick

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Product Description

Product Description

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practice by literature's greatest writers. In the ART OF THE NOVELLA series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

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.


Ingram

A lush edition of this short classic novel gains new perspective with the inclusion of black-and-white photographs depicting nineteenth-century Wall Street and the prison called the Tombs, where the story takes place. 15,000 first printing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars A profound and wise examination, Jul 19 2004
By S. Keough "hubygiku" (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Bartleby is a man who simply prefers not to do anything. He is employed as a scrivener, but prefers not to do his job - indeed, he would rather stand in his office and look out the window than emerge from his quarters. Why he prefers to do nothing is as much a question to his employer as it is to the reader. But however much laziness aggravates the average person, one will quite instantly fall in love with Bartleby's character - or perhaps love him and hate him simultaneously. I found myself imagining reasons for his passiveness and creating events in his life in order to figure out why Bartleby prefers to do nothing. His character would be considered a flat character by the way Melville presents him, and yet I view him as a round character because I feel as though there was a conflict in his past which shaped him considerably. I am left to ponder over the one reason given by the narrator about Bartleby's demeanor, and I find that mystery most intriguing.

I enjoyed this story immensely. I fell in love with the character of Bartleby, and though the tale has a depressed, sad sort of aura about it, I walked away from it with a tranquil, serene sort of feeling. I can't really explain it, but I can say this: I would recommend that you take an hour out of your day and read this story in its entirety, reading it mean so that you get the most out of it. Even if you prefer not to.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A great book about hope as well as despair, Jan 22 2004
By "jkm210" (Hanover, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews
I had to read this story in high school, and wasn't immediately struck by it except to conclude that it was better than Moby Dick. A few years later, however, I ran across this edition at a book warehouse and decided to buy it mainly for its photographs and very low price. Upon rereading it I decided that I liked it much better than I had initially thought.
The other reviews explain the story: Bartleby is employed by a lawyer in nineteenth-century Manhattan to do the work of a scrivener; that is, to copy legal documents. He begins well but eventually refuses to do any work at all. Bartleby will also not leave his office, even after the building is bought by someone else, and so is thrown in jail for vagrancy, where he dies.
Bartleby says very little except his famous line "I prefer not to" when asked by his employer to do any form of work. Much more interesting is the voice of the narrator, Bartleby's employer, who is genuinely concerned about Bartleby's plight and does everything he can to figure out what is wrong. When Bartleby passes away, the narrator's reaction is very sad to read, but the reader is led to believe that the narrator is a changed person.
I would definitely recommend this novella; it can be read in under an hour and is well worth your time.
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