Bartleby the Scrivener & Other Stories: The Lightning-rod Man, The Bell-Tower

by Herman Melville

Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener is a classic American short story, a strange tale of a constantly busy copyist whose simple refrain, ?I would prefer not to, ? wreaks havoc on his workplace. Invention, imagination, and expression combine with two other stories from Melville's The Piazza Tales: The Lightning-Rod and The Bell-Tower. A companion to the highly-praised collection Classic American Short Stories also performed by William Roberts, and including An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Short Stories, Audiobook, Literature, 19th Century

Audio CD

Published August 1, 2006

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

Reviews

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moby Dick is always on the lists of books that one should read before dying (a strange idea - when else would one read it?) but somehow I fear it must be a rather cruel book. However, I wanted to read something by Herman Melville and discovered the Naxos CD version of Bartleby the Scrivener. It is a very bizarre tale which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways but I liked it better than any other short story I had ever come across. Bartleby starts off as a hard-working clerk and ends up as a completely apathetic man whose main occupation is staring at a wall and doing nothing at all. After all, he 'would prefer not to'. Why does he do this? And why has he changed? Those are the questions the reader faces as he/she follows the clerk through several stages to his death. Is the message about the human psyche, the beginnings of capitalism or did Melville dredge this quirky story up from something he had read. You must read it to decide for yourself!

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Herman Melville’s most famous work was Moby Dick (about 850 pages) followed by Bartleby the Scrivener (about 35 pages). Given the choice, most high school English students would choose Bartleby, which it why it’s familiar to so many of us. The narrator of the story hires Bartleby as a “scrivener,” or copyist, which job he does very well. But whenever the narrator asks him to do anything else, Bartleby always declines, saying, “I would prefer not to.” No matter how trivial the request, Bartleby always prefers not to. Eventually he stops doing any work at all, and just stands looking out the window. When asked to leave the premises, he replies “I would prefer not to.” Now, as a reader, I had all kinds of solutions to the narrator’s problem. Call the police. Have him hauled away. Push him out the window. How hard can it be? Eventually the narrator moves his office to another building, leaving Bartleby behind, but people still consider him Bartleby’s “keeper.” Finally Bartleby is hauled off to prison where he starves to death, because he prefers not to eat the prison food. Melville ends his tale by saying, “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity!” And there’s supposed to be a profound lesson in this? Is Bartleby supposed to be a metaphor for humanity? I don’t think so, since I’ve never met a single person anything like Bartleby. If anything, it’s the narrator who represents “Humanity.” He repeatedly bends over backwards to accommodate this weirdo, with no success ever. Which is what humans do. Ah, Melville, you made a lot more sense with your great white whale!

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would prefer not to do a review.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

These stories had a common theme: they had no point.

[Fenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for Bartleby, 3 stars for the Bell-tower and The Lightning-rod Man. Honestly, could have done without reading the last two. Melville has some humorous characters that he will sometimes put into his stories and Bartleby has a few of them. I couldn't really get into the other two stories at all.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn’t understood the complexity of the full story of Bartleby from just the general saying.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my first foray into Melville and maybe my last.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and well read.

[S Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the Bell Tower--nice attempt at Gothic horror but a bit clumsy.

[Kenyon Harbison · Rating 3 out of 5]

More modern-feeling than I expected. Very weird, and interesting. Character meditations more than anything.

[Kevin Arey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great quick introduction to Herman Melville before you jump into his really long stuff.

These stories are not earth shattering or anything, but they are good.

I'd recommend this!

[Patty Marvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This adaptation of three Herman Melville stories is a fine example of why I enjoy audiobooks. Not only do they allow me to enjoy literature while I'm stuck doing much more mundane tasks, but in the hands of the right director and the right voice actor, the stories seem to have an added depth. In the case of older works that use archaic language, their meanings could be made clearer without the aid of a dictionary.

Since this features three individual works rather than one big one, I'll address each story...

1. Bartleby the Scrivener - We all read this one in high school, so I'll just skip to something I noticed. I could be wrong, but it seems the narrator never asks the title character what he really wants/prefers. I noticed this when he - we never DO learn his name, do we? - keeps asking Bartleby what other jobs he would like to perform. Bartleby keeps saying he's not particular while still saying "no" to each suggestion. Then it hit me - the narrator never asks, "Well, what WOULD you prefer," which is a very open-ended question, something that can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" AND - here's the rub - would mean Bartleby states what HE wants. Every suggestion made by the narrator comes from his own mind, these are HIS ideas.

2. The Lightning-Rod Man - A fast-talking man selling lightening-rods in the rain meets his match in a homeowner with a finely tuned bullshit detector. Before the story was over, I was reminded of Jon Stewart's belief that some TV programs are really just "Conflictanators," that they come up with whatever explanation they can to justify scarring the bejesus out viewers and thus increasing their ratings and thereby increasing their ad revenues. The L-R Man makes his living the same way.

3. The Bell-Tower - Herman Melville attempts to be Edgar Allan Poe in this story about the construction of a bell-tower, it's bell and the device to make it gong. I was expecting a more "The Tell-Tale Heart"-ish ending, but this will suffice.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed The Bell Tower more than other Melville stories. Sometimes it kills me that such great writers use such horribly long run on sentences. In every story of Melville’s I've read the opening paragraph is one sentence.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lightning-Rod Man is a tongue in cheek tale of an intelligent man not to be swayed by a peddler. As in Bartleby The Scrivener, Melville reveals his unique style of humor in this narrative, which is quite humorous.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first "taste" of Herman Melville's writing and storytelling. Well worth the time. Clever, good characters and great writing - as only 19th century American writers can produce.

While I enjoyed it, I'm still scared to ready Moby Dick.

[Yani G · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite stories of all time (Bartleby the Scrivener). I really can't say why, as I'm perplexed by this affinity, but I love this story. :D

[Tom Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bartleby was worth it, the rest not so much.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could write a review of this, but . . .