Bartleby the Scrivener

",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 ...