Bartleby, the Scrivener

Herman Melville · 1853 CE · Short Story · Modern / American · Victorian

A comfortable Wall Street lawyer takes on a third copyist, a pale, quiet man who at first works through documents without pause. Asked to help check a copy, he answers that he would prefer not to, and goes on preferring not to, without explanation and without leaving. American fiction's first great refusal.

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Lineage

• parallels ↑ The Metamorphosis
  Franz Kafka · 1915 CE · Novel

Attributes

Closest analogues

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