5 thoughts on “Sunday, October 30, 2022

  1. Roger, I remember reading Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” in high school. I think it was the same year we read Camus’s “The Myth of Sysiphus” – and in hindsight a rather existential pairing. But yes, parts are rather funny and exasperating, even the demure phase, “I prefer not to…” My mind races to think of how Bartleby would fit in the pop comic television show “The Office” or as an employee of Amazon, or In Star Trek, and told “to resist is futile,” a message used by the Borg when they encounter an alien race they intend to assimilate into their collective, or Rosa Parks (1955) when asked give up her seat on the bus, she might have said, to paraphrase, “Nah, I prefer not to…” Ralph Ellison would have found all of the above humorous. Gee, I should type this up.

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