Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) tells the story of the arrival of an enigmatic copyist at a lawyer's office on Wall Street. Quiet, diligent, and seemingly exemplary, Bartleby one day begins responding to every request with a simple yet unsettling phrase: "e;I would prefer not to."e; His passive, inexplicable, and increasingly unwavering refusal gradually transforms the lives of those around him, fo...