The Multiverse of Office Fiction: Bartlebys at Work

Description

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville’s 1853 classic, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction―fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees―as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office. Preface Acknowledgments Contents Part I: Reaching Out Chapter 1: Introduction: Edward Hopper, or Bartleby on Bartlebys The Official World Beyond the Bartleby Industry What If Bartlebys Were Women? Into the Vast Ocean of Office Fiction Chapter 2: Advice Columnist, Recall Specialist, Cyber Capitalist: Bartleby and His Kinsmen Behind the Screen, Behind the Desk The Citywide Office The Christ Business: A Full-Time Job 150 Years after “Bartleby” The Nationwide Office Paper, Soap, Heaven The Ubiquitous Office Into the Web of Life Into the Sphere of Death Chapter 3: At Work, at Home, at Life: Bartleby and His Kinswomen The Office; or, the Competent Woman “Good in Business But Not in Love” The Silence That Followed The Impossibly “Ah, Sure, Miranda” And More Sisterhood “What Do I Want Out of Life, Anyway?” Part II: Farther Along Chapter 4: Backward, Forward, Abroad: Bartleby and His Contexts The Clerks as a Text Within the Text Downward Career Move from the Officeholder The General Post Office, London, or the Workplace like a Marketplace The Detective-Clerk: “An Epistolary Voyeur” The Dead Letter and Backward Extension Gothicizing Work-Life Breakdown Kafka’s House Imagery and Samsa’s Dynamic Family “What Is It That So Frightens All These Men?” Toward a Narrative Poetics Chapter 5: Post-9/11, Posthuman, Post Office: Between and Beyond Bartlebys With 9/11, After 9/11 Rachael Rosen and Her Evolution Away from Hu/Man-Centered Workplaces Post-Work and the Meaning of Life Life Goes on with Work The United States Mails Prose as Poetry From Poet to Novelist Chapter 6: Epilogue: Every Office Tells a Story, and So Does Every Bartleby Can Bartleby Speak? Bibliography Index