Bartleby

The problem with Bartleby is not Paul Scofield or John McEnery, both of whom are fine actors. The problem is the story itself, which cannot really be updated to the present day, regardless of whether that present day be 1970 or 2001. Bartleby is a story written in the 1800s, about the 1800s, and it simply doesn't work in the present day.

For example, there is the office in which Bartleby works. He works for a lawyer in a cold and dark office that seems more akin to that of Ebenezer Scrooge than to any bright, airy, modern-day office building. Indeed, the only window in Bartleby's office has no view because it looks out onto an airshaft.

Then there is the nature of Bartleby's occupation. He is not, as in this version, an accountant. Indeed, his function is nowhere near so creative as that. He is, in point of fact, a scrivener in a law office. And exactly what is it that a scrivener does? He copies law documents. Bartleby is, in point of fact, nothing more than a human Xerox Machine. Bear in mind that, in the 19th century, there were no such things as word processors, Xerox Machines, carbon paper or even typewriters. A lawyer who needed to produce duplicate copies of legal documents employed scriveners to produce those copies word for word, by hand, with pen and paper. It is impossible to imagine any occupation as stupefyingly dull as that.

By the same token, it is also impossible to imagine anyone today performing any occupation even remotely comparable to that of a 19th century scrivener. It simply doesn't, and could't, exist today. And that is precisely the point. The world of Bartleby is as different from the world of a modern office worker as the world inhabited by the whalers in Moby Dick would be from that on board a modern-day whale-catching ship. Both have changed so much since the 19th century as to be as alien as the surface of another planet.