",I prefer not to,", he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the worldeven those daunted by Moby-DickBartleby the Scriveneris simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, ",I would prefer not to",?Th ...