- Anna Maria Junus
The Deal Me In Short Story Challenge: Week 1 Bartleby the Scrivner
Note: This was intended to be published on the 7th. I had it written and almost ready to go when my computer said "I would prefer not to." The result was I had to wait until my computer decided to. I'm thinking I need a new computer. I'm about to fire this one. Strangely, this ties in with my post.
***** I blame Lady in Read for this.
I read her blog post about reading challenges, which led me to this one.
52 short stories
Pen
Paper
Deck of cards
In all my years on earth, I never saw the correlation between the 52 weeks in a year and 52 cards in a deck. My duh.
I kept this real simple. Some people apparently liked to assign a suit to a genre, but that would require knowing the genre and extra work and having to think.
I simply got my book notebook - yes, I'm dweeby enough to have a notebook about books - wrote a different suit at the top of each page, and then numbered down from Ace to King. Then I went and got one of my old English textbooks that had short stories in it and wrote down the stories in order down the page. When I ran out, I got another English textbook and did the same thing (suprisingly there were no doubles}. Finally I found another book of short stories I had and did this until all the stories were given a card.
The results are a wide variety of short stories from some really well known authors that I've never read, as well as from some new authors.
The books the short stories come from:
The Heath Introduction to Literature
Adventures in English Literature
The People's Friend Annual 2006
So the first two are textbooks with lots of older highly revered stories. The People's Friend Annual is put out by an British magazine called the People's Friend which focuses on stories mainly for and about women written by contemporary authors. Note: Even though this last one seems flighty in comparison it is not an easy magazine to get your work into. I've tried. I pulled a card out of the deck and it was an 8 of hearts. When I looked at my list that turned out to be Bartelby the Scrivner by Herman Melville.
Herman Melville is famous for that epic book Moby Dick, which I have never had any desire to read. Sure I like whales. I live by the ocean. But reading about a crazed captain wanting to hunt down a particular whale was not high on my list of must reads. Added to that, it has a reputation of being a very difficult and very long read - about fish and water. The Life of Pi was bad enough. I didn't want to live through that again. I was sort of dreading this short story, because if he could turn a hunt for a whale into a long drawn out never ending book, then that meant there would likely be lots of uninteresting and unneeded passages about guy stuff - and fishing.
But I plunged in anyway.
And I found that the story in a lot of places was very amusing. I think at one point I laughed out loud. Not only that, but I found it relatable even though it was first published in 1853. I think this was the 19th century version of The Office. And not a fish in sight. It's told in first person from the perspective of a lawyer who has three employees, all with different personalities that cause some amount of trials. Two of them are scribes, called Turkey and Nippers, the third is a twelve year old boy called Ginger Nut, who runs errands, sweeps the floors, and is learning the scribe business. The lawyer hires a fourth man, Bartleby, because he needs another scribe (no computers here folks - or even typewriters or dicataphones) and is at first pleased with him but then discovers how difficult this particular employee is. Bartleby even has his own catch phrase - "I would prefer not to." Which means that pretty soon everyone in the office is using the phrase "I would prefer". This lawyer is remarkably patient. I wanted to throw Bartleby out the door (as did his fellow co-workers). The smart mouthed kid even calls him a loon. You know a sitcom isn't complete without the smart mouthed kid. This one is named Ginger Nut so if he were cast they would be looking for a cute red head with freckles. But the lawyer for some reason can't throw him out. He's agonizingly patient. Then he tries to get rid of him. But Bartleby won't leave. Instead of calling the police, like normal people would, the lawyer decides to move offices. Now that is some kind of desperation when you have to resort to moving to get an employee to leave. In some ways the story doesn't make much sense and I was exasperated when there was no reason for the actions of Bartleby, other than apparent mental illness. So I guess that's the explanation. Although, come to think of it, there are people in politics who also refuse to do their job. I'm not naming names. Although one guy I can think of rhymes with Stitch Laconnel. It was interesting that a hundred and sixty years later, this story can still speak for our times now. Difficult employees with entitlement issues exist in every time. And apparently so do catch phrases and sitcom plots. Honestly, all this story needs is an opening theme song.
