Revisiting Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener

The Continued Relevance of this Great American Novella

Photo: The interior of the Tombs, where the inconvenient protagonist was shunted by 1850’s society.

Caveat Emptor: The parallels between this novella and contemporary US society are so rife that I had to sit on my hands to not make obvious political analogies. My goal with this Substack is to only address the horror of US politics tangentially and tacitly.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853)

—Herman Melville

My preferred copy: Simon & Schuster Editions, Commonplace imprint, 1997.

I am a staunch proponent of rereading the “classics”—or what counts as classics in US society—especially if a reader has only previously been introduced to a work in high school, or even if the work was assigned during undergraduate years. It is not that a younger adult cannot adequately comprehend most of the themes, just that these classics are often so rich, both in what is stated and what is tacit, that a reread as a mature adult is necessary to fully appreciate the genius of the author. Rereading works with the burden of years lived is enriching and provides additional perspective.

I was first assigned Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street in Dr. Pamela Sheldon’s tenth grade English class at Stuyvesant H.S. While I don’t remember any of the class discussions, I was smug enough to think that I had adequately understood the work, at least until around the 2000 when I finally reread the novella on a whim. This decision hastened in decades of rereading the work annually. The tale is utterly perfect and foreshadows so many issues that the US and the world face today.

I am so enamored by this “simple” tale that the name for my Substack is an obvious homage to it. My musings and countless references to Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street occur often in my thoughts and writings, so I am reposting the Goodreads review of the novella that I posted upon my last encounter with the enigmatic scrivener who provides a mirror into all our souls.

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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity!

Perhaps the greatest and most enduring novella in American English, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853) is a vast Rorschach test of the American soul; its meanings are multifaceted and always apropos. A Modernist tale that appeared in a meager serial publication seventy years before Modernism was even given the name. A tale of passive resistance that occurs almost a century before Gandhi’s hunger strikes, which influenced the Freedom Marches in the Southern states. A tale that is simple enough to be taught in H.S. and complicated enough to warrant significant space in a PhD thesis. It is eminently unfilmable—like virtually all Modernist works-- though countless directors have tried. . . and inevitably failed, since the moral dilemma in Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street does not involve the eponymous protagonist, but the nameless narrator who becomes increasingly befuddled and discomfited as he attempts to cope with the effete intransigence of the erstwhile scrivener.

The timeless relevance of Bartleby the Scrivener hinges upon modern man’s inability to adequately address existential and class issues right in front of his face. Much like the narrator, most of us are blind or in denial as to the problematic aspects of society that surround us daily. We prefer not to know, to remain “snug” (pg. 20) in a “safe” and comfortable existence that really doesn’t make the world a better place but merely perpetuates the existing system and its cruelties. The nameless narrator is well off financially but utterly bereft of effective solutions when confronted with someone neither well off economically nor emotionally. As in modern society, the Haves are so quarantined from the Have Nots to not even logically comprehend the plight of those below and their futile passive resistance to an unfair system. “Bread? Let them eat Ginger nuts!”¹

In Melville’s era, Bartleby could reasonably be construed as the personification of clerical drudgery, a drudgery that while not in the same league as slavery, shares many components of it; the tale appeared a decade before the Civil War. In the present era, the tale is a condemnation of humankind for failing to comprehend and adequately address whatever is unpalatable in society, from the cruelty of meat processing (vegetarianism gets an early nod in the tale and meat eaters don’t come across so well in Moby-Dick either) to workable humane solutions to cope with climate change.

No matter what problems humanity faces, ignoring them or not confronting them head-on is not a solution. Neither is assuaging one’s soul with insignificant charitable offerings like an extra twenty in severance pay. Nor is running away from one’s problems—passing the buck, so to speak—or changing residence and leaving the annoyance for someone else to deal with. We are all complicit, especially the well off, the “Kings and Counselors.” (pg. 75). The nameless narrator has the outward trappings of Western religion. He can reference a quote from The Book of Job and attends sermons at Trinity Church, but his soul is permanently perturbed by Bartleby's unobtrusive non-partaking of whatever might bring even meager joy in life or his refusal to help the system perpetuate itself. The narrator has a conscience. And it is bothered. He stays with Bartleby until the end, doing more than most of society would, but not enough to have a positive effect on either Bartleby or himself. He discreetly passes on elucidating the reader as to the details of the scrivener’s death. The narrator “would prefer not to.” Why force the narrator and reader to confront an ugly reality? The reader is as complicit as the narrator in an uncaring world. Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity! (pg. 77).

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Notes:

--Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street first appeared in book form within Melville’s The Piazza Tales (1856). It includes three outstanding stories that are required reading for American literature students: Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles and Benito Cereno. Benito Cereno employs a similar narrative sleigh of hand. Like Bartleby the main theme in each is about how the narrator does not readily acknowledge the situation right in front of his eyes whether it be the evil of slavery or mindless work in a society with a clerical class stuck in drudgery. Society is incapable of helping those who cannot help themselves.

--Read an edition of Bartleby with kind font, as I did with the edition mentioned at the beginning of this review, lest the reader turn out like the scrivener.

--There is an autobiographical element to Bartleby, albeit a metaphorical one. Who’d have thought that Melville bludgeons readers with metaphors of his own life? However, comparing exactly how America’s greatest author of Dead Letters—at least in his lifetime—was left to wallow in obscurity, relying on the charity of his wife’s family for sustenance and a dreary day job to keep busy is another essay entirely.

--This review is dedicated to my H.S. English teacher, Dr. Pamela Sheldon at Stuyvesant High School, who first introduced me to this immortal tale.

1. The American English translation of “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" has always tickled me: Brioche.