Annotated Bibliography

The "Reader Fallacy" and "Bartleby the Scrivener" Author(s): David Shusterman Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 118-124 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/364228 . Accessed: 28/03/2013 20:39

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118 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Then came the applause of every one who heard his words and saw his deed.18

The death of Whittier, ended a beautiful friendship in which two kindred spirits had communicated in full harmony. Ina Cool- brith's admiration of Whittier is expressed in the verse which she wrote in 1898:

WHITTIER19 1892-1898

Beneath the still palms, in the smile of God, How seems it in that far and celestial way?

Not strange to him, who, while the earth he trod, Walked in the light and smile of God alway.

18 San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 2, 1892. 19 Mariposa Magazine, 1898 (one issue only), 57.

THE "READER FALLACY" AND "BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER"

DAVID SHUSTERMAN

LIANE NORMAN's "Bartleby and the Reader" in the NEW

ENGLAND QUARTERLY, XLIV, 22-39 (March, 1971) is an excel- lently written essay whose basic interpretation I agree with sub- stantially, though not wholly-that is, when the chaff is eliminated. By "chaff" I mean Norman's method of interpretation which, for want of a better term, I will call the "reader fallacy." One possibly might call it an example of the "affective fallacy," enunciated by Beardsley and Wimsatt except that they were primarily thinking of poetry. It might be helpful, however, to quote from their essay: "The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemologi- cal skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall forms of skepticism. It begins by trying to derive the standards of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome ... is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judg- ment, tends to disappear."' This statement aptly characterizes Norman's essay; it is basically a confusion of story and its results.

1W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington, 1967), 21.

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MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 119

My objection, first of all, is to Norman's initial assumption that "Bartleby the Scrivener" is "a particularly exasperating short story, not because it is difficult to understand, but because of the rigorous and demanding human transaction that takes place be- tween the reader and the story." "Bartleby" is exasperating to me -and, from my talks with others about it, I believe that my reac- tion is not unusual-because it is difficult to understand what Mel- ville is doing; the story is a difficult one in itself. Norman is not the first to point out that one must keep one's eye on the narrator, who is an eminently safe Lawyer; certainly the story is mainly about the Lawyer's changing reactions to the silent, cadaverous young scrivener who is someone out of his ordinary experience. The rigorous and demanding human transaction is that which is going on between the Lawyer and Bartleby; more precisely, the difficult attempts on the part of the Lawyer to comprehend Bartle- by's strange behavior. If this is so, then Norman's initial assump- tion is false: Norman has based the whole essay around an as- sumption that is misleading. But this does not mean that she fails to provide the reader of the essay some acute insights into Mel- ville's story. These insights are, however, in spite of her method.

Every writer creates with an invisible audience in mind, the readers who will pick up his work and appreciate what he has been trying to do. Melville was no exception. Like every other writer, he created his story-in this case "Bartleby"-with the in- tention that it would be understood. But each reader is a unique individual, responding to every story in his own way, and my re- action may differ from that of others. If Melville put into his story a special transaction between "Bartleby" and a hypothetical ideal reader, there is surely no evidence to that effect; it is amazing, moreover, that Norman offers not one iota of proof that Melville did just do that. The most that Norman should have said is that "this is my reaction as one reader; it seems to me that what makes the story difficult for me is that there is a rigorous and demanding human transaction taking place between me and Melville's story."

Let us look at some of the flaws in Norman's method. After stating, in the first paragraph, her initial assumption-stating, but not offering any proof-Norman goes on to say that the reader is "both participant and judge: that is, he finds himself sympathizing with the Lawyer, putting himself in the Lawyer's place, and then, having identified his interests and reactions with the Lawyer's,

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120 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

being required to judge the Lawyer and, thus, himself." Un- doubtedly, this is what has happened to Norman and probably to many readers; and there can be little doubt that the Lawyer is try- ing to do just that: he is a special pleader for himself, whatever else he is, because he is looking back, after a period of time, on his strange relation with Bartleby and is still somewhat puzzled by it. He undoubtedly seems to want the reader to realize what he has gone through, to understand his ordeal; he also wants to convey all that he has been able to learn about Bartleby. But this is not the same thing as saying that the reader will always react in the way that Norman says he is supposed to: that Melville presupposes an ideal reader who is fated to react in a particular way. One of the difficulties about this story is that the reader may balk at almost the beginning.

"As a consequence of recognizing that he shares the Lawyer's assumptions and attitudes to a large extent," Norman goes on to say in the third paragraph, "the reader is made to find the Lawyer ultimately wanting in humanity and to recognize Bartleby, who disrupts the functioning of what the Lawyer represents, as an ex- treme example of one who is protected and even celebrated by the laissez-faire, democratic, and Christian code of value." The reader is not "made" to do any such thing. What happens, it may be asked, if the reader does not share at all the Lawyer's assumptions and attitudes, not even at the very outset? For example, the Lawyer tells us that "I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best." Many people do not believe that the easiest way of life is the best; one does not have to be a puritan-though the puritans would certainly reject such a view of life-to see the fallacy of such an attitude. It is probable that someone like Melville, who was filled with such a deep awareness of the power of blackness in man's heart, the importance of original sin, as expressed in his famous review of Hawthorne's tales, would have rejected such an attitude. One may, therefore, ask this: Can it be that Melville, with his profound awareness of human psychology, expected some readers to reject the Lawyer at the very outset, to find him suspect even before they have read very far into his story? Such readers will not have to wait to find the Lawyer ultimately wanting in humanity; they may find him wanting immediately.

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MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 121

When the Lawyer then goes on to expound his conviction that he is an "eminently safe man," who is not insensible to "the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion" and so loves the name of Astor that he loves to repeat it for it "rings like unto bullion," I, for one -and I have found others who react in the same way-look at him somewhat askance. Possibly there were not so many people who would reject the Lawyer's reaction towards Astor when the story first appeared as there are now, but surely there were some; it is hard to believe that Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville himself would think that the Lawyer was a very sensible person. When I read this passage I find myself feeling that the Lawyer is insufferably smug; moreover, I feel that anyone who boasts about being a "safe" man and loves to repeat the name of Astor in his manner must be somewhat deficient in humanity and quite obtuse towards human beings; he is more concerned with money than anything else. Surely this was Melville's intention: to have his reader not to sympathize with the Lawyer, not to identify with him, not to put himself in the Lawyer's place. What, then, be- comes of Norman's argument?

Melville was surely more cunning than Norman would make him out to be; Norman is, judging from her essay, that type of reader whom Melville may have thought would fall easily for the Lawyer's kind of special pleading. Melville, I think (but I must confess that I am not so sure as Norman as to what Melville in- tended doing), would have it both ways in his kind of readers; those who reject the Lawyer almost immediately; and others, who would fall for the Lawyer's views and only gradually, like Norman, find themselves rejecting many of them and, in doing so, find themselves identifying with Bartleby. There may, conceivably, be other reactions as well, and this additional factor helps make this an exceptionally cunning story: possibly there are some readers who would reject the Lawyer at the outset but who would not identify themselves with Bartleby at any costs, who would feel that both the Lawyer and Bartleby are found wanting; there may also be some readers who would identify themselves with the Lawyer completely and still reject Bartleby, who would never under any circumstances comprehend Bartleby and feel that he has received all he should have, that death in the Tombs is a fitting end for such an unwilling participant in the problems of life. These latter

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122 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

-and I think, though I am not sure, a few of my students in the past would be among their number-would believe that when the Lawyer says at the end that Bartleby is with kings and counselors, he is being simply ridiculous; that when, after learning that Bartleby was employed in the Dead Letter Office, the Lawyer can state in his conclusion to the sad story, "Ah, Bartlebyl Ah, human- ityl," he is stating, not only something entirely cryptic, but also in excess of the facts. These readers are surely the most obtuse of all, one feels; their humanity seems to be totally lacking, they are on the side of John Jacob Astor, whom they admire excessively, and believe that there is nothing wrong with the laissez-faire attitude towards human beings, even such a pitiful one as Bartleby. These varying reactions towards the story are as a result of Melville's ambiguity, a quality which Norman rightly says is built into the story; and if Norman had gone on to expound an interpretation based on "Bartleby the Scrivener" in this light instead of bringing in a fallacious hypothetical reader who must react in a certain way, nobody could have quarreled much with it.

I must emphasize that I am not altogether at odds with Norman's views about the story; my chief quarrel is with her method. Never- theless, Norman does appear to be too dogmatic in some of her method which makes her not sufficiently aware of Melville's am- biguities. "The Lawyer," Norman states with assurance, "is at no point cruel or even unkind to Bartleby." Cruelty it may not be, but one might quibble as to whether the Lawyer is being kind or unkind to Bartleby when, in exasperation, he says: "What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?" Those who feel by now in the story that Bartleby is a clear-cut case of extreme dementia, might possibly believe that the Lawyer is not only exhibiting his obtuse- ness but also is saying something terribly unkind to a very sick man. There are certainly others-and I have found a few readers who believe this-who not only believe that the Lawyer is being unkind to Bartleby but applaud him for being so. And how else can one interpret the Lawyer's statement when he tells us, after Bartleby has said that he likes to be stationary, that he now lost all patience and for the first time "fairly" flew "into a passion"? He shouts an order to Bartleby that he must quit his premises be- fore night; and even though he absurdly concludes with the ridicu- lous statement that if Bartleby does not do as he insists, then he'll

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MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 123

have to quit the premises himself, I can't see how one can doubt that, whether justified or not, the Lawyer has been abusive of poor Bartleby.

Norman is probably quite correct in saying that when the Law- yer states he is going to "purchase a delicious self-approval" in befriending Bartleby, it "is impossible to approve of so commer- cial a view of goodness"; at least one would think that most readers would feel the same way as Norman does. But then she goes on to add: "yet because the reader has so recently identified himself with the Lawyer, sharing his indignation, sharing his sympathy, the reader cannot dissociate himself quickly enough to escape the scorn that follows on this disclosure." One throws up one's hands with dismay and exclaims, "Speak for yourself, Norman." I, who have not identified myself with the Lawyer to any great extent, can only say that I demur: it seems to me to be sheer innocence on Norman's part to react as she does and, furthermore, to say that I must feel self-scorn upon hearing of this disclosure. What I do feel is that the Lawyer is just being himself, humbugging himself possibly, but in any case just continuing in his original role of smug fool.

It can easily be seen, if one has followed my reaction to the story, that I cannot accept what Norman thinks about what is finally called "The most important stratagem in the story. . . ." "To be the reader's problem," Norman states with assurance near the conclusion of the essay, "the reader must participate in a relation- ship with Bartleby. He does this by finding the Lawyer, on the whole, normal, reasonable, essentially like himself. The contempt he feels for the Lawyer must be no more than he can bear to turn upon himself." As one reader, I do believe that the Lawyer is con- temptible; and though I think that I am on the whole normal (whatever that means) and reasonable, I do not believe that I can identify myself with the Lawyer to any extent, even from the be- ginning of the story; nor do I feel that Melville has expected all of his readers to do so. It is possible also that I may not be normal and reasonable; I may be as mad as a hatter. If so, how could I identify myself with the "normal and reasonable" Lawyer? I have deliberately reduced my argument to the level of absurdity in order to show merely the absurdity of Norman's use of the "reader fallacy." I am not as sure as Norman that Melville expected all of his readers to believe that the Lawyer has been normal and reason-

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124 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

able; from the very beginning, it may very well be that Melville has been trying to show that the Lawyer has acted abnormally and unreasonably to poor Bartleby. If so, his attempts at the end of the story to reverse himself and point out Bartleby's relationship to kings and counselors of the earth and to state, more succinctly, Bartleby's relationship to humanity as a whole, may be interpreted either as more of the same humbuggery or else a complete reversal of values; no more, presumably, if the latter is the case, does he feel as he once did towards John Jacob Astor; now he scorns that worthy financier.

The ambiguities in this story are indeed greater than Norman has perceived. The struggle with the reader is more profound than Norman has realized; not quite so clear, not, by a wide margin, so easily deduced from the story. Newton Arvin's words would seem to be, in conclusion, very appropriate: "Is the setting of 'Bartleby' a Wall Street law office or the cosmic madhouse?" And, as he goes on to suggest: "It is of course both, and 'Bartleby' has the quality, small though its scale is, of suggesting a whole group of meanings, no one of which exhausts its connotativeness."''2

2 Newton Arvin, Herman Melville (New York, 1950), 242.

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