Melville is the protagonist of Duberstein's novel; the events--partly imagined, partly based on fact--take place during the later years of the writer's life.
"What I feel most moved to write, that is banned--it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches."
A descendant of a member of the Boston Tea Party, Melville was born in New York. His father went bankrupt and died when the boy was 12, leaving seven children and a penniless wife. Herman quit school at 15 and went to sea for the first time at the age of 18 (an adventure he described in his novel REDBURN). Two years later, after a school-teaching interlude, he sailed to the South Seas on a whaler--the basis for his great whaling novel, MOBY-DICK. He stayed in the South Seas for over three years, more...
A descendant of a member of the Boston Tea Party, Melville was born in New York. His father went bankrupt and died when the boy was 12, leaving seven children and a penniless wife. Herman quit school at 15 and went to sea for the first time at the age of 18 (an adventure he described in his novel REDBURN). Two years later, after a school-teaching interlude, he sailed to the South Seas on a whaler--the basis for his great whaling novel, MOBY-DICK. He stayed in the South Seas for over three years, gaining the background he would later use in his many novels about the sea. Then he returned to the States to write. His first novel, TYPEE, was published in 1846, and that and his next four books made him famous and sought-after in the literary world. Married in 1847, in the summer of 1850 he bought an 18th-century farmhouse in the Massachusetts Berkshires, where he and Nathaniel Hawthorne became close friends. The friendship, however, lasted only two years, and ended for unknown reasons. (Hawthorne's wife Sophia pronounced Melville, "A man with true, warm heart, and a soul and an intellect--with life to his fingerprints; earnest, sincere, and reverent; very tender and modest." Hawthorne himself called him "a person of very gentlemanly instincts in every respect, save that he is a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen.") MOBY-DICK, dedicated to Hawthorne, was published in 1851. Partly because MOBY-DICK was not well received, partly from his own inclination, Melville stopped writing fiction in 1857, after the publication of THE CONFIDENCE MAN--except for the masterly novella, BILLY BUDD, which he finished shortly before his death. In his entire career, Melville earned a total of about $10,000 from his books; his novel PIERRE earned him only $157 in total royalties. He spent the last 19 years of his life in New York City as an obscure customs inspector. He died at home, 104 East 26th Street, of heart failure, at the age of 72.less...
Bartleby is a man who simply prefers not to do anything. He is employed as a scrivener, but prefers not to do his job - indeed, he would rather stand in his office and look out the window than emerge from his quarters. Why he prefers to do nothing is as much a question to his employer as it is to the reader. But however much laziness aggravates the average person, one will quite instantly fall in love with Bartleby's character - or perhaps love him and hate him simultaneously. I found myself imagining reasons for his passiveness and creating events in his life in order to figure out why Bartleby prefers to do nothing. His character would be considered a flat character by the way Melville presents him, and yet I view him as a round character because I feel as though there was a conflict in his past which shaped him considerably. I am left to ponder over the one reason given by the narrator about Bartleby's demeanor, and I find that mystery most intriguing.
I enjoyed this story immensely. I fell in love with the character of Bartleby, and though the tale has a depressed, sad sort of aura about it, I walked away from it with a tranquil, serene sort of feeling. I can't really explain it, but I can say this: I would recommend that you take an hour out of your day and read this story in its entirety, reading it mean so that you get the most out of it. Even if you prefer not to.
Bartleby is a man who simply prefers not to do anything. He is employed as a scrivener, but prefers not to do his job - indeed, he would rather stand in his office and look out the window than emerge from his quarters. Why he prefers to do nothing is as much a question to his employer as it is to the reader. But however much laziness aggravates the average person, one will quite instantly fall in love with Bartleby's character - or perhaps love him and hate him simultaneously. I found myself imagining reasons for his passiveness and creating events in his life in order to figure out why Bartleby prefers to do nothing. His character would be considered a flat character by the way Melville presents him, and yet I view him as a round character because I feel as though there was a conflict in his past which shaped him considerably. I am left to ponder over the one reason given by the narrator about Bartleby's demeanor, and I find that mystery most intriguing.
I enjoyed this story immensely. I fell in love with the character of Bartleby, and though the tale has a depressed, sad sort of aura about it, I walked away from it with a tranquil, serene sort of feeling. I can't really explain it, but I can say this: I would recommend that you take an hour out of your day and read this story in its entirety, reading it mean so that you get the most out of it. Even if you prefer not to. 