Dan McCall
The Silence of Bartleby.
Cornell University Press, 1989. First edition. 0801495938 xiii/206 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.75" x 8.5", displays moderate wear, with lightly bumped upper outside corners of several pages. Book is otherwise in fine condition, with solid binding, clean and bright pages.
"In "The Silence of Bartleby" Dan McCall proposes a new reading of Herman Melville's classic short tale "Bartlby, The Scrivener." McCall discusses in detail how "Bartleby" has been read in the last half-century by practitioners of widely used critical methodologies -- including source-study, psychoanalytic interpretation, and Marxist analysis. McCall argues that in these elaborate readings of the tale the text itself may be lost, for critics frequently seem to be more interested in their own concerns that in Melville's. Efforts to enrich "Bartleby" may actually impoverish it, preventing us from experiencing the sense of wonder and pain that the story provides.
McCall combines close reading of Melville's tale with a lively analysis of over four decades of commentary, and incldues the text of the original "Bartleby" as an appendix. "The Silence of Bartleby" helps us read the story on its own terms, and offers a provocative assessment of modern critical strategies and the way that reading is now taught in American colleges and universities. Students of Melville, American literature, and literary theory will welcome this book and profit by it."