Bartleby & Co.

In Bartleby & Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby & Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.

Author: Enrique Vila-Matas
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 04/01/2007
Pages: 178
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.28w x 0.54d
ISBN13: 9780811216982
ISBN10: 0811216985
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Hispanic & Latino