(Brian Contine is working through Melville House’s novella series. He’ll be reviewing them all here. This is the second review in the series.)
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Inside the cover flap of Melville House’s printing of Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener you’ll see the statement, “Academics hail it as the beginning of Modernism…” These academics are as bold as they are confounding. I’m confounded because artists as diverse as John Milton and Sigmund Freud have been saddled with the obligation of birthing this overstuffed movement, with the irascible Harold Bloom denying its entire existence. And while Bloom may be the most right, he’s the least fun. Modernism is a fun fish to chase, even though we never quite hook it. It’s because of this never-ending chase that calling something the beginning of Modernism is a wonderful way to spark interest, create debate, and sell books. I don’t think Bartleby the Scrivener birthed Modernism, I don’t even think it’s Modern. I do, however, think that Bartleby himself would have been an important Modernist.
Modernism is much easier to show than to tell. It’s diverse. But I think you know it when you see it. Bartleby the Scrivener isn’t Modern because it’s too polite, too pretty, and too familiar. The humor is accessible, and the writing unaware of itself. If you read Bartleby the Scrivener, you’ll be amazed by its conversational tone, and it’s ripped from the sky storytelling, almost as if the story was always there ready to be told. And then go and read W.C. Williams’s Spring and All. This collection of connected poems comes to you kicking and screaming. They’re ugly, daunting, and foreign. Things are misplaced and mistakes abound, but Williams’s masterpiece is Modern, so it comes with the territory.
All the of Spring and All’s personality traits are absent in the novella Bartleby the Scrivener, but are shared by the character Bartleby the scrivener. His ever-present catch phrase “I prefer not to.” is so incredibly rude that it becomes endearing. We love so much about this four-word statement, because I’m not sure we’d know how to react when confronted with it. How would you react?
‘Sir, could you pass the salt’
‘I prefer not to.’
Politeness asks us to consider Bartleby’s humanity, look for his struggle, find his hurt and fix it, Modernism asks us to consider his words. So while Melville’s characters trip over themselves trying to ‘figure’ Bartleby out, a Modernist might pay close attention to the richness of the word ‘prefer’, and ask their odd employee to do it anyway. So the salt conversation from above goes something like this:
‘Sir, could you pass the salt’
‘I prefer not to.’
‘Do it anyway.’
This book is so much fun. I can’t imagine anyone reading it and not laughing at this quirky little group of scriveners. You’ll love Bartleby the book, and you’ll be in love with Bartleby the character. This Herman Melville guy can really write, I wonder if he ever wrote any longer novels?
~ Brian Contine, BookPeople bookseller
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