![]() He asks Bartleby many questions about his family his personal history, but Bartleby prefers not to answer any of them. The next day, The Lawyer calls Bartleby into his office. He resolves to find out more about Bartleby’s personal life, find one of Bartleby’s relatives to take care of him, and fire Bartleby with generous severance pay as soon as possible. At first The Lawyer thinks of Bartleby’s poverty and solitude, feeling a great pity for him, but soon that pity morphs into anger and repulsion, as The Lawyer believes Bartleby to have some incurable mental illness. With Bartleby gone, The Lawyer snoops inside Bartleby’s desk, finds a few belongings, and determines that Bartleby must be living in the office at night and on weekends. Bartleby tells him that he needs a few moments alone inside, and after The Lawyer walks around the block and returns to the office, he finds himself alone. There, he finds the office door locked, and when the door is opened he finds Bartleby on the other side. One Sunday morning, The Lawyer is on his way to Church and decides to stop by the office. ![]() And, in fact, The Lawyer justifies that keeping Bartleby on costs him little to nothing, but it makes him feel charitable and eases his Christian conscious. After considering firing Bartleby once more, The Lawyer decides not to, as he becomes busy with other matters and decides that Bartleby is useful for what he does provide-vast quantities of writing. Bartleby listens, but again repeats that he’d “prefer not to” help. He considers firing Bartleby, but decides to try to reason with him, telling him that it’s common courtesy in this industry to go over copy for errors as a group. When his boss asks him to examine a paper with him for errors, Bartleby replies that he “would prefer not to.” At first The Lawyer thinks he has misheard his employee, but when he repeats himself and Bartleby again prefers not to help, a pattern emerges that The Lawyer must reckon with. While at first Bartleby proves an excellent employee, producing a huge quality of writing for his employer, his working habits are rigid and peculiar. Bartleby comes for an interview, and The Lawyer hires him. But, rather than focus on a group of them, he will tell the tale of the oddest one he’s known: Bartleby.Īfter explaining that his office is occupied by himself, two other scrivener employees ( Turkey, who is a drunk and therefore only useful before he starts drinking at lunch, and Nippers, who has some kind of habit that means he is only productive during the afternoon hours), and Ginger Nut, a twelve-year-old office boy, The Lawyer says that he has posted an ad to hire a new employee. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.The story, set in a Wall Street law office in the mid-1800’s, begins with the unnamed narrator, The Lawyer, stating that he would like to focus his tale on a group of humanity as of yet unwritten about: scriveners, or law-copyists, of whom he’s known many. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. Sealts, Jr., and the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry text of The Piazza Tales. This Penguin Classics edition features the Reading Text of Billy Budd, Sailor, as edited from a genetic study of the manuscript by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Also including The Piazza Tales in full, this collection demonstrates why Melville stands not only among the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, but also as one of our greatest contemporaries. In these stories, Melville cuts to the heart of race, class, capitalism, and globalism in America, deftly navigating political and social issues that resonate as clearly in our time as they did in Melville's. In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd, Sailor the controlled rage of Benito Cereno and the tantalizing enigma of Bartleby, the Scrivener Melville reveals himself as a singular storyteller of tremendous range and compelling power. Annotation: A new, definitive edition of Herman Melville's virtuosic short stories American classics wrought with scorching fury, grim humor, and profound beauty Though best-known for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, Herman Melville also left a body of short stories arguably unmatched in American fiction.Series Title: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Ser.
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