Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener

“The Boss is bound to quit the premises himself!”—reads the Facebook status of the Boss. As many Facebook users, the Boss uses his status to express his feelings and frustration. While many college students express their feelings and frustration towards midterms and parties, the Boss uses it to express his feelings and frustration towards Bartleby. Particularly towards the fact that he feels forced to move out of his office because Bartleby will not do it himself. His status is an indirect call to both Bartleby and his two loyal scriveners—except they are not really scriveners. In 2009 Bartleby, Turkey and Nippers are associates at a prestigious Law Firm and Ginger Nuts is a young paralegal. Through his status, the Boss wants Bartleby to know that he has had enough of his behavior and his three associates to know that , even if they do not see it, he is in fact doing something to fix the whole situation. In the left-upper corner of the page, the Boss has a picture of him in a suit at his office. It is important for the Boss to appear in a suit and at his office, not only to publicly portray himself as a respectable Law Firm director, but also to establish his authority and demand respect. Although the Boss only uploads pictures of him in a formal attire and setting, he never untags himself from the pictures his loyal associates post online. In a sense he enjoys them. After all the Boss does not have many friends—at least not under the Facebook standard. He has 76 friends: 42 under Columbia University, 30 under Princeton University, 2 under University of Chicago, 1 under New York University, and 1 under Tulane University. He had some friends as an undergrad at Columbia and was lucky enough to contact his entire class at Princeton Law School. Suffice it to say that Turkey and Nippers found out that they had both gone to University of Chicago Law because of Facebook, while going through their Boss’ list of friends, and thinking about who they would want to befriend. The Boss does not have Facebook applications—he praises himself for being an old-fashioned sort of guy. His profile is rather empty. The Boss has no list of activities or favorite movies. But he does have a list of all the Law firms he worked at before establishing his own. At the top of the list: John, Jacob, and Astor. The firm was one of the many prestigious Law firms located in Wall Street. But it was special for the Boss. John, Jacob, and Astor had been established by three of his Law school professors—the same professors who offered him his first job while only a third-year Law student at Princeton. At the bottom of his Facebook page the Boss has a description of him: “all who know me consider me an eminently safe man. John, Jacob, and Astor had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method.” And under his favorite quotes:

The easiest way to life is always the best - The Boss