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Novelist Enrique Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co. is an homage to “artists of refusal,” a catalog of the “literature of no.” Vila-Matas — inspired by the title character of Herman Melville's novella, Bartleby, the Scrivener , as well as his own writer's block, no doubt — assembles dozens of examples of writers who found themselves notably stuck, mute, unable to create but unable also to abandon the hope of creating:
I have studied the illness, the disease, endemic to contemporary letters, the negative impulse or attraction towards nothingness that means that certain creators, while possessing a very demanding literary conscience (or perhaps precisely because of this), never manage to write: either they write one or two books and then stop altogether or, working on a project, seemingly without problems, one day they become literally paralyzed for good. (p. 2)
This disease does not only afflict writers. We are all susceptible to this negative impulse, this paralysis that is neither death nor life but rather something in between. Be it professionally, creatively, or personally, the shadow of nothingness is ever present, whether we know it or not. At some time in our lives, many of us find ourselves under the influence of this “Bartleby complex.” A deeper look at Bartleby himself and the Bartleby inside us has the potential not only to help us better understand ourselves and our culture, but also to provide valuable insights into the therapeutic relationship.
Bartleby, the Scrivener is an absurd, puzzling, sometimes unsettling text. The story's unnamed narrator is a well-to-do lawyer on Wall Street who hires Bartleby as a copyist and proofreader. Bartleby is at first a diligent worker and a model employee, if a bit odd of temperament. Bit by bit, however, Bartleby starts refusing to carry out his duties, answering requests with the curious phrase, “I prefer not to.” Eventually, he ceases working altogether. The narrator, at a loss for how to handle Bartleby, tolerates this ina