Margins
Bartleby & Co. book cover
Bartleby & Co.
2000
First Published
3.93
Average Rating
193
Number of Pages
In Bartleby Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is an utterly engaging work of profound and philosophical beauty.
Avg Rating
3.93
Number of Ratings
4,755
5 STARS
31%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
22%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
2%
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Author

Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas
Author · 22 books
Enrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish author. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a founding Knight of the Order of Finnegans, a group which meets in Dublin every year to honour James Joyce. He lives in Barcelona.
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