“I’d rather not”: Elke Heidenreich on Melville’s Bartleby culture

Stay optimistic, take care of your health, be constructive: what if you can’t do it anymore if we refuse? One of the most famous sentences in world literature shows how it works.

“I’d rather not.” For literary connoisseurs, this is a very famous sentence. It is the sentence of the writing assistant Bartleby, who works in a law firm for a lawyer and notary and suddenly says quietly but with a firm voice to a job that is offered to him: “I’d rather not.”

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