A New Republic of Letters in the Digital Age In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853), Melville self-reflexively critiques the life and death of reading.  Melville’s titular character Bartleby’s dead letter-reading and life-writing (or not-writing, because, after all, Bartleby “prefers not to”) criticize national ethics of expression and representation.  The novella can also […]