Bartleby, The Scrivener

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"I would prefer not to." ... So says the "incurably forlorn" Bartleby, a legal clerk at a small Wall Street firm, whenever he is asked to perform a routine task by the increasingly perplexed lawyer who hired him. The lawyer attempts to understand Bartleby even when the latter is reduced to merely staring out the window. He cannot bring himself to fire this odd, listless man, or to abandon efforts to reason with him