Cecily's Reviews > Bartleby the Scrivener

“Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.”

• You know that colleague who doesn’t do their fair share, leaving you and others to pick up the slack?
• And the one who is too good at what they do and makes everyone else look bad?
• What about the alcoholic who doesn’t pull their weight after a daily liquid lunch?
• Or the inscrutable one who may be battling mental illness or other issues, but is nevertheless infuriating?
• How should management juggle compassion and fairness amid such diversity?
• How much carelessness, laziness, and insubordination should they tolerate?

This short novella about a small office, way back in 1853, is remarkably pertinent, decorated with some charmingly antiquated turns of phrase.

It is both funnier and more tragic than I expected.

The setup

The unnamed narrator is pushing sixty:
“I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds”.
He employs two scriveners and an office boy, known by nicknames: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. His grotty chambers are described with amusing understatement:
“My windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade.”


Image: The view (Source)

He portrays himself as a benevolent, but ineffectual, boss: anyone else would long ago have fired Turkey for his “eccentricities”, thus, an additional scrivener is required:
“In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.”

At first, Bartleby is very industrious. He’s also silent, pale, and mechanical. “On the third day” (such a weighted phrase), the boss asks Bartleby to do a minor task, within his duties:
“Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, ‘I would prefer not to.’”
And he sticks to that.

WWYD?

• What would you do if you were the boss?
• How would you feel if you were Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut?
• And why is Bartleby behaving this way?

The story progresses, with humour and tragedy, but very few answers. It’s brilliant.

“Up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not.”
If Bartleby worked for me, I’m unsure what I would do. I’d certainly be curious, and I’d have sympathy for some of the revelations and assumptions about his life. However, I don’t think I’d be as lenient as the boss says he was.

It explores work, duty, charity, mental ill-health, fate and free will, and the power of the word “prefer”.


Image: Bartleby would prefer not to (Source)

Quotes

• “He was a man whom prosperity harmed.”

• “When a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side.”

• “Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”

• “His cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance.”
“His mildly cadaverous reply.”

• “But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.”

• “‘You will not?’
‘I prefer not.’”

See also

• You can read the novella free, online, on Gutenberg, HERE.

• For a contemporary take on a similar situation and themes, see Jonas Karlsson’s The Room, and my review HERE.

• Gogol's The Overcoat. See my review HERE.

• Kafka in general, and a specific story of his. See my Kafka shelf HERE.

• Towards the end, I thought more of JL Borges. See my overview review of his works HERE.


Short story club

I reread this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.