With the new release of four classic Melville stories, #IWouldPreferNotTo, which includes Bartleby The Scrivener, I had a golden opportunity to check my hypothesis. around 1968 I viewed it as an episode of The Twilight Zone I was not familiar with.

I leave it up to English Scholars to debate the issue, but for me first reading the story in college circa. I’ve heard said that Herman Melville’s classic story Bartleby The Scrivener is the first true example of existentialism in American Literature. On top of Bartleby, #I Would PreferNotTo contains the classic stories TheLightening-Rod Man, John Marr, and the novella Benito Cereno,which makes this a must have for your literature libraries. Then add to that a last line that is as timely today as it was when it was written, a line I’ve taken to using more and more the older I get. But it is the possible explanation appearing at the end of the work which is why in my twisted mentality the story becomes Twilight Zoneish. Bartleby, the 19th century law office scrivener whose only reply when asked to do anything is, I Would Prefer Not To, is perhaps one of the most alienated characters in American Fiction.

I would prefer not to melville