Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

I would prefer not to...
(This is a phrase that Bartleby says all too often)


Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive ... a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?

(In the last page of the story, the narrator tries to make some sense of why Bartleby is content to prefer to do nothing--it is rumored that he once worked in a dead letter office...)


I just thought you would find that interesting.... American Literture today, eh wot?