I prefer not to, he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
disappeared.
Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around
the world--even those daunted by Moby-Dick--Bartleby the Scrivener
is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the
mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps,
Herman Melville's most prescient story: What if a young man caught up in
the rat race of commerce finally just said, I would prefer not to?
The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville
before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of
his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is
presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's
magazine--to, sadly, critical disdain.
The Art of The Novella Series
Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is
generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a
form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art
of the Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form
and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented
in book form for the first time.