(np - Melville - was Re: The People's History & the Cold War ) equity? who ever heard of that?

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> No, the Wall Street narrator is a successful American, Cicero-believer-in
> to whom Bartleby is outside of his Ciceronianism....
>
>
>

but he really makes some extraordinary gestures of outreach!

I can't think of anything else that he could have tried.

It's tempting to consider Bartleby as the externalization of
"conscience" or some unyielding faculty which knows that the roles of
"lawyer to the rich" and "chancery court appointee in charge of
tempering the harshness of justice" conflict deeply - one can't serve
2 masters, and we know from the start which one our lawyer prefers -
and from his own statement he sees the latter chiefly as a supplement
to his income...

but, what if there isn't a discrepancy?

what if guarding the general weal is essentially the same work as
providing a human touch to the machinery of law?

our lawyer certainly doesn't draw a distinction -- it's all the same
work, in that he doesn't distinguish the work he holds out to Bartleby
at the moment of that first, fateful "preferring not to"!  - he
doesn't tell us at any point, does he, whether a piece of work is
chancery work or private practice?

and perhaps we are supposed to take our clue from him.  After all,
Bartleby doesn't just refuse to copy and redact private work - he
refuses it all, and everything else.

So, a working out of the "everlasting no?"

As far as interpretation for the individual reader goes, subjectively,
"it's all what it means to you" (there's a great bit in one of the
Adrian Mole books about how he really thought _Animal Farm_ was about
a farm...) --- and although I believe with alice that there is a
consensual literary reality that hovers like a floating dish at a
seance, sort of a joint effort thingie where position and velocity can
be determined to a fair degree of accuracy....

still, Bartleby came across to me first as a cautionary tale that I
saw on TV at that very time in my life when I was accomplishing least.
All of the subtleties were lost on me, but Bartleby became somewhat of
a byword and a goad, a reminder to at least try a little.  And so he
remains, at least in my mind...