{"id":12132,"date":"2022-02-18T11:23:54","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=12132"},"modified":"2022-02-18T11:23:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:23:54","slug":"bartleby-the-scrivener-by-herman-melville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/bartleby-the-scrivener-by-herman-melville\/","title":{"rendered":"Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m glad I read the Melville House “Art of the Novella” edition of this book: the “Illuminations” at the end of the book added some much-needed context, as it’s been a while since I studied transcendentalism in school. Having both “The Transcendentalist”<\/a> and “Civil Disobedience”<\/a> included with Bartleby the Scrivener<\/i> felt really useful in terms of placing this novella in its American political\/philosophical\/literary moment. <\/p>\n

As for the novella itself, before reading it I had known Bartleby’s catch-phrase of “I would prefer not to”, but I didn’t know much more than that and wasn’t really expecting the book’s mix of humor and pathos. I like the NYC atmosphere Melville evokes: I can picture the area around Trinity Church quite well because my office is very close to there: I’ve walked along Wall Street from Broadway at lunch breaks or after work, and I liked imagining those streets in centuries past as I read. <\/p>\n

(Relevant quote from Emerson: “Unless the action is necessary, unless it is adequate, I do not wish to perform it.” And from Thoreau: “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m glad I read the Melville House “Art of the Novella” edition of this book: the “Illuminations” at the end of the book added some much-needed context, as it’s been a while since I studied transcendentalism in school. Having both “The Transcendentalist” and “Civil Disobedience” included with Bartleby the Scrivener felt really useful in terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}