The Silence of Bartleby by Dan McCall

by Dan McCall

In The Silence of Bartleby, Dan McCall proposes a new reading of Herman Melville's classic short tale "Bartleby, The Scrivener." McCall discuss in detail how "Bartleby has been read in the last half-century by practitioners of widely used critical methodologies―including source-study, psychoanalytic interpretation, and Marxist analysis. He argues that in these elaborate readings of the tale, the text itself may be lost, for critics frequently seem to be more interested in their own concerns than in Melville's. Efforts to enrich "Bartleby" may actually impoverish it, preventing us from experiencing the sense of wonder and pain that the story provides. McCall combines close readings of Melville's tale with a lively analysis of over four decades of commentary, and he includes the complete text of story itself as an appendix, encouraging us to read the story on its own terms.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Dan received his Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University, later attending Columbia University for his PhD. Upon graduation in 1966, he came to Cornell University where he taught American literature and creative writing to generations of Cornell students over the next 40 years. He is the author of several novels, including Jack the Bear (1974), Beecher (1979), Bluebird Canyon (1983), Triphammer (1990), and Messenger Bird (1993). Jack the Bear was translated into over a dozen languages, and was released as a 20th Century Fox film in 1993, starring Gary Sinise, Reese Witherspoon, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, among others. His critical and scholarly books include The Example of Richard Wright (1969), The Silence of Bartleby (1989), Citizens of Somewhere Else (1999) and the Norton Critical Edition of Melville's Short Novels (2002).

Reviews

[Mae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This explores some of the most compelling and some of the most idiotic interpretations of Bartleby. I definitely think that Bartleby is supposed to represent something but I also think that "refusing to do something until you starve to death" is enough of a message in itself.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the literary criticism of "Bartleby the Scrivener" -- fascinating to read a whole book summarizing whole other books, about a short story.

I read "Bartleby" in high school which was definitely too soon. It bothered me, though, stuck with me. I wanted to ANSWER it, EXPLAIN it -- because I was young and all things had to have an explanation back then.

Gratifying to see that drives much of the scholarship about the story.

Few literary theorists explore a subject without a dog in the fight, and sure enough, McCall has a drum to beat. He's opposed to readings that cast the narrator as a villain, pointing out that all the evidence of his weakness comes from his own point of view.

I'll give him that. It's clear to me, at least, that we aren't meant to hate the narrator, but I do think we are meant to be disappointed in him.

The book ends with the full text of Bartleby, which is a great way to end a literary crit book. I read the story and found it much more satisfying than I did at eighteen. Yes, I still love Bartleby and want to save him, yes, I see the narrator does, too. But this time I also see how willful Bartleby is, how, at times, passive-agressive. "You know why" is one of his few lines of dialog that isn't "I prefer not to."

No, Bartleby, he doesn't. And I don't know why my husband is mad at me, either.

Moreover, I see that it's no coincidence that the story opens first explaining the relationships between the narrator and his other scriveners, Turkey and Nippers. Each one is annoying or abuses his position in some way, and the narrator continually says that he knows he should do something about it, but finds a reason not to.

In short, my dog in the fight is that this is a story about inaction. The narrator does not do as much as he might have, does not find the secret to save Bartleby, because he talks himself out of action. Likewise he talked himself out of action with his other clerks. Likewise Bartleby is defined by his inaction-as-action, which he takes to an extreme, dying of inaction, when he could so easily have done or said something to save himself.

I'm less enflamed to understand WHY Bartleby prefers not to, or what he might prefer to do, I enjoy the story as it is, and I think this book helped me "get it."

[Michael Crofford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. My reaction after reading The Silence of Bartleby is "why the hell didn't he talk.". McCall gives a good summary of the academic opinions from as he calls it the "Bartleby Industry." A quick summary of the offered explanations for Bartleby's behavior include mental health issues (depression/autism), political reasons, Christian interpretation, capitalist relationship of worker/owner, characterization of Hawthorne or other Melville's peers. Some critics even suggest the narrator is completely unreliable! McCall goes into a fair amount of detail of these and a few others.

I read this book really motivated by an explanation of why so much silence, or at least have a good idea. I left the book pretty much not caring. What changed my mind was one transformative quote which originally comes from Melville scholar Elizabeth Hardwick which McCall cites (at the end of the chapter titled Hawthorne a problem). She writes " To read Bartleby as someone other than himself "dishonors" him. And it does him great violence - it takes his silence away from him. I just love that quote. I appreciate this work now more than ever and even Bartleby or someone real like him as a fellow human.

One other thing to point out especially if you're a fan of Cormac McCarthy. The first chapter "Swimming through libraries" is about how Melville makes use of other authors. I found it analogous to the later work "Books are made out of books" by Michael Crews. Here you can really appreciate the style of both Melville and McCarthy as both are extremely erudite and incorporate so much other work into their works. I think they both shed light on how something like Moby Dick or Blood Meridian is created.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good critical essays about Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener." I like McCall's analyses and his supports, as well as how he incorporates other critics' writings into his. Includes the short story.

Swimming Through Libraries
"the critics do to us something rather like what they do to Melville: in failing to understand how he used his reading they fail to understand how we should read him. Much of the Bartleby Industry is not 'source study' at all, finally, for the 'source' becomes the subject. Critics claim to have found the 'key' to unlock the story. But their metaphor is fundamentally flawed. There is no key. If we have to use a metaphor, perhaps we should think of a jigsaw puzzle rather than a key. Intent on finding the true 'source,' we fail to show the extent of Melville's wide-ranging indebtedness; we fail to show how he released himself from his reading and went beyond it to make of it something utterly his own." (28-29)

"It is impossible to understand his actual creative process, in any phase of his career, unless, as Leon Howard suggests, one considers any book he was using 'in relation to the literary tradition of which it was a part--that is, unless Melville's own work is examined against the background of works by other writers who were in his mind at the time he planned and wrote his own story' [Howard, Herman Melville]."

"A Little Luny"
Melville's mental state; Melville's/Ahab's/Bartleby's mental states; Moby-Dick; Pierre; food/eating references/descriptions in Melville's writing. eating=substitution for sex(uality)? sexuality in Melville's stories; Bartleby = schizophrenic? Bartleby = autistic? (Henry A. Murray now calls autism "the Bartleby complex" [49]). However, "[w]e have no evidence, no matter how carefully we read what he says and does, that Bartleby's brain is damaged. His soul, yes. The Lawyer says 'soul.' To see Bartleby's troubles as a chemical malfunction of the brain is contradicted by his actual behavior. When we study the actual lines Bartleby speaks, we have to notice that a certain obdurate wit springs up naturally in the special delicacy of his phrasing. Bartleby is thinking twice, not hearing double (as autistics do) [50]. ... The problem is not that Bartleby's brain does not work; the problem is that Bartleby will not work" [50].)

"A Passive Resistance"
Bartleby influenced by Thoreau's Civil Disobedience?

"Hawthorne: A Problem"
Bartleby based on Hawthorne? Lawyer based on Hawthorne? characters/writing influenced by Hawthorne's writing?

The Reliable Narrator
"If I had to isolate one reason that finally persuaded me to write this book I would have to choose this one: the overwhelming majority of the Bartleby Industry reads the narrator of the story in a way that is not only different from mine but quite incompatible with mine. Every virtue I see in the man, they see as a vice; where I see his strength, they see his cold self-absorption. Some critics read the story as I do, but we are in a distinct minority." (99) "Even those very few critics who defend the Lawyer do it half-heartedly." (105)