Bartleby, the Scrivener - A LitSalon Short
Event Details
“I’m posting this LitSalon Short as a ‘taster’ for anyone considering joining me for the ten-meeting study of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, starting 14 January 2027, 6.30–8.30 pm (UK time). Participants will also get a feel for my facilitation style.”
Nancy Goldstein
In this LitSalon Short we’ll be discussing Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853), one of the strangest and most haunting stories in American literature. Published in the same year as Bleak House, it echoes many of the themes in Charles Dickens’ novel.
A law office. A copyist who responds to every request with “I would prefer not to.” A system that cannot process a human being who simply stops complying.
Or can it? Melville’s central joke — that a man who does nothing is more destabilising than a man who does harm — is both absurd and completely logical. The story asks, with a perfectly straight face, what happens when a human being falls through the cracks of every institutional net designed to catch him.
As for Bleak House. Dickens’ masterpiece has at its centre Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a suit in Chancery that has consumed fortunes, ruined lives, and become its own self-perpetuating institution — a monument to procedural delay so vast and so perfectly constructed that it requires no villain to sustain it. The thematic overlap with Bartleby is exact: the way bureaucratic logic defeats human agency without anyone being visibly responsible. Dickens knew that the cruellest thing a corrupt system can do is not to break its own rules. It’s to follow them perfectly.
Our ten-meeting study of Bleak House begins on Thursday 14 January 2027.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single session LitSalon Short on Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, led by Dr Nancy Goldstein. The story is available free online via the linked text above.
- Thursday 12 November, 5.00–6.30 pm (UK time), live on Zoom
- ‘LitSalon Shorts’ are single-session studies (usually slightly shorter than a typical Salon study meeting) in which a facilitator shares with the wider Salon community their enthusiasm for an aspect of literature or culture.
- Shorts are offered free of charge, but numbers are limited so please use the booking form below to reserve a place. Although there is no fee for this Short, Nancy asks you to consider making a donation — perhaps the price of your last G&T or flat white? — to José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds hungry people in war and emergency zones all over the world, from Gaza and Ukraine to Pakistan and areas struggling with natural disasters.
