Jocelyn Saidenberg
DEAD LETTER
by Jocelyn Saidenberg
Finally! Bartleby speaks his mind. In 1853, Herman Melville published the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” an icon for generations of resisters, and in the story all Bartleby repeats is one statement. According to Christian Nagler’s “Afterword,” “It may be the most reproduced meme in American letters: I would prefer not to.”