Economy and Mental Health: Discussing Jenny Odell’s Overview of “Bartleby”
In Jenny Odell’s book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy there are a multitude of sources given in order to help Odell express and support her stance of anti-economy/establishment. Throughout her book, Odell references multiple different authors and writings, scholarly articles, journals, papers etc., papers written by some of history’s greatest philosophers, online articles, the list contains almost every bit of literature there is. Odell does her best to capture the parts of each of these sources that help support her cause. Unfortunately, for some of these sources she only gives a glimpse of the story, and not the whole truth. Such is the case for when she mentions Herman Melville’s story Bartleby, the Scrivener.
Bartleby, the Scrivener is mentioned by Odell in the chapter of her book ‘The Anatomy of a Refusal’, it is brought up after she speaks about Deleuze, a French philosopher. She states that Melville’s writing was one of her favorite stories of refusal. This book is important to Odell because it offers the perfect example of resisting the attention economy. Throughout the story Bartleby almost passive-aggressively refuses to do anything, but rather than coming out and assertively saying ‘no’, Bartleby responds with: “I would prefer not to”. Odell sees this as the best example of how to resist the system, not by fully coming out and saying ‘no’ but rather doing it in a similar fashion as Bartleby. Odell incorporates the story of Bartleby in her writing very well, as with every other inclusion of text in her book. She relates it to what it was she was speaking about and explains as to why she chose to include it. She even goes on to speak about some theories of the book. The problem is, in her attempt to ‘cherry-pick’ the part of the story, she fails to see a crucial aspect of the story.
Who is Bartleby?
Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story of reflection by the narrator, a lawyer on Wall Street in the early 1900’s. In his firm he has several employees, mainly scriveners, who are people that would copy legal documents. After needing some additional hands, our narrator hires Bartleby, who in the beginning of the story is seen as a hard-working scrivener who always did what was asked of him. As the story progresses however, we learn that Bartleby starts to ‘tank’ when it comes to his job, whenever Bartleby was asked to do his work he would respond with one line ‘I would prefer not to’. At first, our narrator is astonished by this response, but he cannot bring himself to yell at Bartleby, for which he does not know why, and he proceeds to give the document to someone else instead. This one time of slight resistance starts to show in every aspect of Bartleby’s life. From then on in the story whenever Bartleby was told to take care of some bit of work, he responded with ‘I would prefer not to’. For some reason, the narrator cannot seem to be angry with Bartleby, he just allows it to happen. He allows this to happen all the way to the point where Bartleby starts to sleep in our narrator’s office and when asked to leave he responds with the same line, over and over again, to everything asked of him. The narrator starts to feel sympathy for Bartleby and no longer decides to resist, he solves the problem of Bartleby sleeping in his office by buying a new office space and moving. Bartleby still, passively, refuses to leave. Time goes by and the new tenant of the building calls the narrator to speak about Bartleby and to say that he solved the problem by arresting Bartleby. The narrator still cannot explain why he feels so much sympathy for Bartleby and even goes to visit him in prison. Bartleby refuses to speak with him so he leaves, he comes back at a later date to find Bartleby lying in the prison yard, dead. Some time after his death the narrator learns that Bartleby worked at the Dead Letter Office, and the narrator suspects that his behavior must have started after working there for so long.
Time For A Discussion
During my first reading of Bartleby, the Scrivener I did not take that deep of a dive into the reading and mainly focused on getting through the story of it. After my second reading of the story I took a deeper look into it and started to try and find symbolism in metaphors, something Herman Melville is quite infamous for as seen in Moby Dick. During this second reading I became even more drawn towards Bartleby. I started seeing similarities between me and him, his iconic phrase was similar to the way I would react to being told to do something myself, the sudden and drastic change in character. My personal interpretation of this story is that the story is the development of depression and what it does to a person. I say this because for most of my time in high school I struggled with my mental health, and I saw many similarities between my high school self and Bartleby while reading this story. Mental health is a very important thing to keep in mind and take care of, it can be the difference between a successful and happy life, to one of great sadness. My theory is that after working at the Dead Letter Office for so long, he finally broke emotionally.
I spoke briefly earlier about how Odell ‘cherry-picked’ parts of Bartleby, the Scrivener in an effort to try and help support her argument on resisting the economy. During her explanation of the story she does not at all mention this theory of depression taking over Bartleby, she only mentions the part that she feels will help her case. When she mentions the story she speaks of it quite fondly too, she even states in her book, “my favorite parts of ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ are the lawyer’s reactions, which so quickly progress from disbelief to despair”(Odell 69). Odell even goes into detail of the multiple philosophers that have taken a look at the writing and does not bring up this idea. Rather than speaking about theories of why it is the lawyer does not simply start to scold Bartleby and fire him for his behavior, and many theories about the lawyer and his reaction rather than focusing on Bartleby and why it is he acts the way he did.
Personally, I have no idea why Odell does not focus on Bartleby and his mental health, but rather focuses on the lawyer, especially since her book is primarily on the idea of resisting the economy to help yourself and your mental health. With her focus put towards the lawyer and his baffled reaction, she misses a huge part of the story with her explanation. Odell makes Bartleby out to be some sort of hero of resistance, when in actuality he is a victim of the economy. Bartleby spent a lot of time working for the Dead Letter Office, which, judging by its name, is not a happy place to work. Bartleby has been working for many years as part of the economy, sacrificing his mental health the entire time, and doing so has put him into a deep depression. This lack of acknowledgement of Bartleby’s decline in Odell’s book matters as this is a textbook example of clinical depression, and her not mentioning this in her book hurts her argument for mental health and resistance. It hurts her argument because by not mentioning this she loses support for her message of retaining mental health. Odell is not giving the full story of Bartleby in her explanation, she is just picking a particular piece of it almost out of context. Without the full story, the more important aspect of it anyway, she is almost deceiving those her read her book. Similar to how big name media outlets take quotes out of context to fit their needs all the time, Odell is doing the same with her readers (not to the same degree of course).
In Jenny Odell’s book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy there are a multitude of sources given in order to help Odell express and support her stance of anti-economy/establishment. One of the most interesting stories she references is “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” written by Herman Melville. While Odell praises this book and its main character, Bartleby, for being the prime example of what she is preaching, she does it in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. Bartleby is being put on a pedestal by Odell for the wrong reasons, she makes him out to be a hero of resistance, when in all reality he is a victim of the economy. Melville writes a story about a man struggling from depression caused by his work, and Odell seems to miss that in her explanation of the story in “How To Do Nothing”. Personally, I feel as though if Odell discussed this in her explanation of the story, it would only increase the support of her argument. As the lack of information in her explanation is deceiving. If she were to dive deeper into the idea of the decline of Bartleby’s mental health, rather than keep her focus on the reaction of the narrator, she would create a stronger support in her case showing the damage the economy has on a person.
References:
Odell, Jenny. How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Melville House, 2019.
Melville, Herman, and Sabine Wilharm. Bartleby, the Scrivener a Story of Wall-Street. Insel Verlag, 2020.
