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Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (The Art of the Novella series)
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Manufacturer: The Art of the Novella
Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: The Art of the Novella
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Our Price: $10.00
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: The Art of the Novella
Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: The Art of the Novella
Average Customer Rating:
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Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (The Art of the Novella series) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780974607801
ISBN: 0974607800
Label: The Art of the Novella
Manufacturer: The Art of the Novella
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 100
Publication Date: 2004-05-01
Publisher: The Art of the Novella
Studio: The Art of the Novella
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780974607801
ISBN: 0974607800
Label: The Art of the Novella
Manufacturer: The Art of the Novella
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 100
Publication Date: 2004-05-01
Publisher: The Art of the Novella
Studio: The Art of the Novella
Editorial Review of Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (The Art of the Novella series)
This beautifully packaged series of classic novellas includes the works of Anton Chekhov, Colette, Henry James, Herman Melville, and Leo Tolstoy. These collectible editions are the first single-volume publications of these classic tales, offering a closer look at this underappreciated literary form and providing a fresh take on the world's most celebrated authors.
The rat race of Wall Street is turned on its head when Bartleby the copier decides that he simply "would prefer not to" in this absorbing early modernist tale.
Customer Reviews of Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (The Art of the Novella series)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Square peg in a round hole
Review: A scrivener, Bartleby, is trapped in the soul-killing monotony of his job, a job that leads a co-worker to get soused every day at lunch. After a while, Bartleby starts refusing his assigned work, but in turning away from his tasks he doesn't turn to doing anything else. His rebellion is passive - staring at the brick walls that enclose him and the others on Wall Street, he becomes a standing rebuke of superficial `busy-ness', a rebuke from which his employer eventually flees.
I appreciated this story more after reading Mordecai Marcus' interpretation of it (`Melville's Bartleby as a Psychological Double', College English 23 [1962]: 365-8). Marcus sees Bartleby as his employer's `double'. That is, this recalcitrant worker is a part of the lawyer's own psyche, one that suffers neglect in the urban office. Something essential to its sustenance is missing. Obdurate in the face of all monetary enticements, this spectral other can't fit its assigned place in the urban business hub. It belongs to nature, the lawyer's own nature, and is marooned in 'unnature' (Wall Street). Naturally, it withers in this world of material plenty.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's not the book, it's the shipping
Review: The book was required reading for my daughter. When none of our local bookstores had this book and ordering would take seven days or more, I turned to Amazon knowing that I could ship the book overnight if it was in stock. That is what I did. I went to Amazon, the book was in stock and paid twice what the book was worth for OVERNIGHT SHIPPING. How long did it take me to get the book? SEVEN DAYS!!! I paid for overnight shipping and it still took SEVEN DAYS to get this book. I will think twice before getting ripped off by AMAZON again!! BEWARE OF OVERNIGHT SHIPPING ON AMAZON!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bartleby
Review: In my opinion, Bartleby gets a bit boring sometimes, but maybe that's because I was sleepy when I read it. In general, the storyline is somewhat unique. Turkey and Nippers are copyists or scriveners while Ginger Nut, a boy of twelve, does odd jobs. The narrator notes these eccentricities, but excuses them. The narrator, torn between pity and exasperation, also discovers that Bartleby apparently has no home or friends, and lives in the office. Bartleby, however, only repeats his mantra, and the narrator eventually fires him. Bartleby, however, continues to haunt the premises, causing the lawyer considerable embarrassment.
I would give Bartleby three out of five stars, because I really didn't think it was that amazing, because I got lost in it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I would prefer not to
Review: The strange behaviour of the main character 'Bartleby' in this short story can be described as 'perfectly harmless passivity': 'I would prefer not to.'
The reason for this behaviour lays in the fact that Bartleby was suddenly removed out of the 'Dead Letter' office in Washington after a reorganization.
'Dead letters! does that not sound like dead men? ... Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring ... a banknote ... he whom it would relieve nor eats nor hungers anymore ... on errands of life, these letters speed to death.'
Bartleby had hope. He had a job, albeit a rather 'catastrophic' one. But, he himself became the victim of a catastrophe: he lost his job, his hope. He became a stoic.
Bartleby is the personification of humanity's lost hopes: 'Ah , Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'
This is a profoundly modern and magisterial tale.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The immortal ' I prefer not to '
Review: Bartleby is the story of one of the great ' naysayers' of Literature. But unlike Dostoevsky's ' Underground Man' he does not scream out his 'nay' in curses. His 'nay 'is quiet. " I prefer not to" . A much more romantic American adolescent naysayer Holden Caulfield will captivate readers also by saying to society, the world, the system of conventions that all are subject to, nay and nay again.
The outcast, the loner, the naysayer is of course one great archetypal figure of world and most especially American Literature.
Bartleby belongs among them.
And the fact that neither he nor the narrator nor the author fully articulate the ' root of his nay' adds in a way to the mystery and mystique of the character.
There is it seems to many of us something admirable in those who can turn away from the demands of ordinary society, and listen to the sound of their own drummer.
But what is maddening and absurd in Bartleby is that he does not seem to do this for anything special. He gives no hint that this ' nay ' gives him personal satisfaction. His withdrawal seems impersonal .And it seems a reflection of his own feeling about himself which is ' nay' Or on another interpretation it might be said that his saying ' I prefer not to' is the only way in which he preserves a vestige in his own identity.
Clearly there are many ways of reading this. But this is an exemplary tale, of course enriched by Melville's descriptions of the office world of the time, by his masterful language and humor.
One of the great long - short stories, or if you will, short novels. A masterwork without question.
Review Summary: Square peg in a round hole
Review: A scrivener, Bartleby, is trapped in the soul-killing monotony of his job, a job that leads a co-worker to get soused every day at lunch. After a while, Bartleby starts refusing his assigned work, but in turning away from his tasks he doesn't turn to doing anything else. His rebellion is passive - staring at the brick walls that enclose him and the others on Wall Street, he becomes a standing rebuke of superficial `busy-ness', a rebuke from which his employer eventually flees.
I appreciated this story more after reading Mordecai Marcus' interpretation of it (`Melville's Bartleby as a Psychological Double', College English 23 [1962]: 365-8). Marcus sees Bartleby as his employer's `double'. That is, this recalcitrant worker is a part of the lawyer's own psyche, one that suffers neglect in the urban office. Something essential to its sustenance is missing. Obdurate in the face of all monetary enticements, this spectral other can't fit its assigned place in the urban business hub. It belongs to nature, the lawyer's own nature, and is marooned in 'unnature' (Wall Street). Naturally, it withers in this world of material plenty.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's not the book, it's the shipping
Review: The book was required reading for my daughter. When none of our local bookstores had this book and ordering would take seven days or more, I turned to Amazon knowing that I could ship the book overnight if it was in stock. That is what I did. I went to Amazon, the book was in stock and paid twice what the book was worth for OVERNIGHT SHIPPING. How long did it take me to get the book? SEVEN DAYS!!! I paid for overnight shipping and it still took SEVEN DAYS to get this book. I will think twice before getting ripped off by AMAZON again!! BEWARE OF OVERNIGHT SHIPPING ON AMAZON!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bartleby
Review: In my opinion, Bartleby gets a bit boring sometimes, but maybe that's because I was sleepy when I read it. In general, the storyline is somewhat unique. Turkey and Nippers are copyists or scriveners while Ginger Nut, a boy of twelve, does odd jobs. The narrator notes these eccentricities, but excuses them. The narrator, torn between pity and exasperation, also discovers that Bartleby apparently has no home or friends, and lives in the office. Bartleby, however, only repeats his mantra, and the narrator eventually fires him. Bartleby, however, continues to haunt the premises, causing the lawyer considerable embarrassment.
I would give Bartleby three out of five stars, because I really didn't think it was that amazing, because I got lost in it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I would prefer not to
Review: The strange behaviour of the main character 'Bartleby' in this short story can be described as 'perfectly harmless passivity': 'I would prefer not to.'
The reason for this behaviour lays in the fact that Bartleby was suddenly removed out of the 'Dead Letter' office in Washington after a reorganization.
'Dead letters! does that not sound like dead men? ... Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring ... a banknote ... he whom it would relieve nor eats nor hungers anymore ... on errands of life, these letters speed to death.'
Bartleby had hope. He had a job, albeit a rather 'catastrophic' one. But, he himself became the victim of a catastrophe: he lost his job, his hope. He became a stoic.
Bartleby is the personification of humanity's lost hopes: 'Ah , Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'
This is a profoundly modern and magisterial tale.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The immortal ' I prefer not to '
Review: Bartleby is the story of one of the great ' naysayers' of Literature. But unlike Dostoevsky's ' Underground Man' he does not scream out his 'nay' in curses. His 'nay 'is quiet. " I prefer not to" . A much more romantic American adolescent naysayer Holden Caulfield will captivate readers also by saying to society, the world, the system of conventions that all are subject to, nay and nay again.
The outcast, the loner, the naysayer is of course one great archetypal figure of world and most especially American Literature.
Bartleby belongs among them.
And the fact that neither he nor the narrator nor the author fully articulate the ' root of his nay' adds in a way to the mystery and mystique of the character.
There is it seems to many of us something admirable in those who can turn away from the demands of ordinary society, and listen to the sound of their own drummer.
But what is maddening and absurd in Bartleby is that he does not seem to do this for anything special. He gives no hint that this ' nay ' gives him personal satisfaction. His withdrawal seems impersonal .And it seems a reflection of his own feeling about himself which is ' nay' Or on another interpretation it might be said that his saying ' I prefer not to' is the only way in which he preserves a vestige in his own identity.
Clearly there are many ways of reading this. But this is an exemplary tale, of course enriched by Melville's descriptions of the office world of the time, by his masterful language and humor.
One of the great long - short stories, or if you will, short novels. A masterwork without question.