…I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head
bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended with the copy, so
that immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least
delay.
In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do--namely,
to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy,
Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, "I would prefer not to."
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears
had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone
I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, "I would prefer not to."
"Prefer not to, " echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride.
"What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here--take it," and
I thrust it towards him.
"I would prefer not to," said he.
I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation
rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words,
had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises.
But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors.
Bartleby, The Scrivener
"The Encantadas," and "Benito Cereno"-and uncollected stories show Melville's dazzling mastery
of many styles. "Should find a place on every civilized person's bookshelf."
-- Los Angeles Times
"The stories of The Piazza Tales are [among]...the most widely read of Melville's work. They evince a competence,
even a mastery.... 'I would prefer not to,' Bartleby famously says, and there is in all these tales a certain reserve,
a toning down into brown and sombre colors the sunny colors and brilliant blacks of the earlier work, a desolation
hauntingly figured forth by the eerie slave-seized ship of 'Benito Cereno' and the cinderlike islands of 'The Encantadas.'
The style...is not quite the assured, playful, precociously fluent, and eagerly pitched voice of the sea novels.
It is a slightly chastened style, with something a bit abrasive and latently aggressive about it."
--The New Yorker, May 10, 1982
Library of America Web Site, May, 2001
This third volume rounds out Melville's complete fiction with his dark and brilliant late works. The novels
Pierre, Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man forgo the buoyant high seas for a keen, bleak vision of life at home
in America; they look forward to modernist fiction in their satire and formal experimentation. The Piazza Tales-including
"Bartleby the Scrivener,"
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities
Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile
The Piazza Tales
The Piazza
Bartleby, The Scrivener
Benito Cereno
The Lightning-Rod Man
The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles
The Bell-Tower
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
Uncollected Prose
Articles and Reviews
Etchings of a Whaling Cruise
Authentic Anecdotes of "Old Zack"
Mr Parkman's Tour
Cooper's New Novel
A Thought on Book-Binding
Hawthorne and His Mosses
Tales
Fragments from a Writing Desk
The Happy Failure
The Fiddler
Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!
Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs
The Two Temples
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
Jimmy Rose
The 'Gees
I and My Chimney
The Apple-Tree Table
Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)
Chronology
Note on the Texts
Notes
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