Bartleby & Co. [Hardcover]

Enrique Vila-Matas (Author), Jonathan Dunne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2004

A marvelous novel by one of Spain's most important contemporary authors, in which a clerk in a Barcelona office takes us on a romping tour of world literature.

In Bartleby & Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby & Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A satiric romp, with stops for delicious/malicious bites at the writing world and its practitioners and hangers-on. -- Confrontation

Abandonment and renunciation are the themes of Vila-Matas's whimsical novel. -- The New York Times Book Review, Anderson Tepper, 5 June 2005

Has its strange cerebral satisfactions. -- Village Voice, Ben Ehrenreich, 29 December 2004

Modern Spain's best writer among a growing sect of fanatics scattered around the world. -- Juan Forn, Página 12

Perfect. Beautiful. Wistful....an exquisite, exhilarating meditation on the 'art of refusal.' -- Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times, 20 December 2004

The logic and structure of the book are as playfully circular as a gesture in a Miró painting. -- San Francisco Chronicle, Brenn Jones, 31 December 2004

The most important living Spanish writer. -- Bernardo Axtaga, author of Obakakoak

Vila-Matas has had the brilliant idea of tracking down literature's slackers. -- Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

Vila-Matas's touch is light and whimsical, while his allusions encompass a rogue's gallery of world literature. -- Anderson Tepper, Time Out New York, 2 December 2004

[Vila-Matas is] one of those curious, original and seductive phenomena writing in Spanish today. -- Rafael Conte, Abc

About the Author

Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. His novels have been translated into eleven languages and honored by many prestigious literary awards including the Prix Médicis Etranger. Author of Bartleby & Co., Montano’s Malady, and Never Any End to Paris, he has received Europe’s most prestigious awards and been translated into twenty-seven languages.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (December 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215911
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215916
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,320,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To write or not to write., February 14, 2005

By 

Javier A. Moreno (Lyon, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bartleby & Co. (Hardcover)

Bartleby and Co. is an excellent entrance to get into the extremely rich literary work of the Barcelonian writer Enrique Vila-Matas. Described as a "series of footnotes of an invisible -unexistent- book", it compiles, following a labirinthic order, the observations of an early-retired writer about a pretty recurrent phenomenon among writers that he calls the "negating literature" (literatura del no). Mixing reality and fantasy, Vila-Matas gives account of the most interesting cases of writers, like Bartleby or Salinger, who stopped writing for good at some point in their lives. It is also a marvelous tour through contemporary literature and, at a higher level, it can be seen as a metaphor of abandonment and negation that explores the reasons we have for writing and telling stories and also as a homage to all those brave men and women who have decided to devote their live to writing, who have taken such a dangerous (and slippy) path.

A great follow up for this book, if you liked it, is "El Mal de Montano" (I'm not sure it's translated to english already).

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous book, January 15, 2008

By 

James Elkins (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bartleby & Co. (Paperback)

Dear Mr. Vila-Matas,

I have no reason to think you will ever see this. Why, after all, should you spend your time reading the reviews on the English-language Amazon site? But I have decided to write this review as if I am writing it to you, because it's in the spirit of your book. And how will I describe this book? It is generous, open, friendly, conversational, and also -- I hope you did not think this was only going to be a friendly review -- also infuriating, loosely written, and hopelessly scattered.

The book is a treasure trove of wonderful books, because you report on many writers that your reader will not have heard of. I marked the margins of my copy with a dozen names that I will now have to go and read. At the same time, I was delighted to find the names of many others that I know and recognize.

And that leads me to my frustration. From very nearly the beginning of the book I found myself arguing with you. Your theme, you say, is "writers of the No," meaning writers who have, for one reason or another, stopped writing. But that is the crux of the matter, that "one reason or another." Writers stop writing for many different reasons. Beckett is not the same case as Rimbaud, and Melville is not the same as Hawthorne. Some were depressed, some tired, some scared, and some -- I would have thought they would be your only subject -- stopped because they felt that modernism (a word that is weirdly absent from your book) prohibited the endless production of novels.

I can hear you saying, Well, yes, but as I say in my book, this is a vast subject, and there are many nuances and many different cases that must be judged and weighed. Exactly. They are different, and where your book falls short (sorry, I am being honest because I do not think you'll see this letter) of, say, Blanchot or even Perec (whom you cite) is where it is necessary to really slow down and think about each individual case.

PS, please, some day, read Wittgenstein's Tractatus. You wouldn't have written what you did if you'd read it, and it might have changed your ideas about other silences as well.

Still, even though this sounds negative and even, I suppose, a bit petulant (or even arch in my mimicry of your easy way of writing), the book is wonderful. It is richer, more full of ideas and writers I want to know, than any academic book I can think of.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writers of the No, July 26, 2009

By 

M. Haber - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bartleby & Co. (Paperback)

I have written the most magnificent and brilliant review of this book, quite possibly the best-written review ever posted on Amazon. However, in writing something, anything, one realizes the limits of language, the unsolicited twists words make on a mind's unadulterated thoughts. Hence, the review for this book is on the shelves of universal literature, among the greatest books and reviews never written.

Thank you Mr. Vila-Matas