I Read Stories: Bartleby The Scrivener

 

Bartleby The Scrivener

Our narrator, a 19^th century Wall Street lawyer, has three employees, known by their nicknames. First is Turkey who is calm until his dinner hour, twelve noon, afterwards excitable and blots his work. The second is Nipper who is always angry and slapdash in the morning, but calms down in the afternoon. The third is the office boy, Ginger Nut, who mostly runs errands. As his business is going well, the lawyer employees a new man, Bartleby, who seems generally calm all the time, which is a bit easier on him.

Their main job is scrivener, or perhaps copyist. As most legal documents required more than one copy (one for the lawyer, one for the other lawyer, one for the court, one for the client, one for the city records etc etc depending) and printing was not appropriate for these small numbers, clerks had to make copies. This went on relatively well until one day the lawyer asks Bartleby to stand with his copy as the lawyer reads it to check for errors. Bartleby replies that he would prefer not to.

Things escalate, though as this is a nineteenth century work, they do so slowly. The lawyer slowly comes to the realisation that Bartleby is living in the office. Bartleby’s number of things he would prefer not to do increase. The lawyer tries to fire him, giving him a bonus and a reference; Bartleby simply stops working but remains in the office. He won’t evict him – imagine how it will look – and eventually moves to a new office. This doesn’t work as everyone assumes he’s responsible for Bartleby who would prefer not to leave. The slow, almost grinding failure for Bartleby to be moved by all the coercion, which ends in tragedy, becomes quite creepy, perhaps slightly undercut by the attempted explanation. Yet perhaps not, for how can this rational explanation be an answer to Bartleby’s preferring not to do anything conventionally?

Read This: If you know about this then the actual version that takes a long time through the eccentric office of a lawyer as the frame is interesting
Don’t Read This: You would prefer not to
Out Of Copyright: And available online