Rating: 
Summary: Melville's most effective work
Review: A great existentialist tale if you pay attention to the title character, a more psychologically challenging work if you question the narrator and his motives and the reliability of his description. Indeed a great work. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Bartleby: A case study in clinical depression
Review: Bartleby is the story of a classic (though in those days undiagnosed, of course) case of what we now call "clinical depression." His symptoms--especially his utter passivity and his complete indifference to his own fate to the point of paralysis and eventual death from starvation--fit the textbook definition of the disorder down to the last detail. And of course, when the reader discovers at the very end of the story that Bartleby had lost his previous job, we have the final piece to the puzzle--the likely catalyst for his mental illness. Unfortunately, cases like this happen all the time in real life.This is a superbly well-written but very disturbing--even haunting--story that will send a shudder of recognition through anyone who has ever known a victim of this crippling psychological disorder.
Rating: 
Summary: What a waste
Review: Congratulations Herman Melville - you have a good vocabulary and know how to describe a setting. Benito Cereno was a waste of my life. Yes, the story is interesting and political and provocative but it could have easily been condensed by 50 pages. The build up is completely unnecessary. if you are desparate to read this book, read only the first 15 and last 15 pages
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Summary: A lawyer aids a scrivener who ends up in an asylum!
Review: Herman Melville spins a great tale that's easy to read. It's a story about five men, and the main character is just as much the narrator as it is Bartleby. The narrator is an attorney who hires three people to work for him, and each one is a real character. All the men are described in great detail, and they are terrific thumbnail character sketches that will stay in your memory bank for years to come! The last man employed is Bartleby, and he is really a strange duck! Bartleby is an excellent copier of legal documents, and initially he does a fine job. However, as the story progresses Barleby acts very strange. He responds with the words, "I'd prefer not to," when asked to proof-read manuscripts, and this response continues whenever the narrator, his boss, asks him perform the ususal office tasks such as going the the post office or doing small errands. The climax of the story comes when the narrator finds Bartleby in the law office getting dressed one Sunday morning. It appears that Bartleby is using the office for his lodging, and the narrator later comes across his personal belongings and shaving kit. As the story progresses, Bartleby does less and less work, and soon he's nothing more than a fixture in the law offices. When the narrator dismisses him and pays him a salary plus a tip, Bartlby refuses to leave. Finally, the narrator is about ready to go crazy -- the man won't leave. So, the narrator moves his law practice to another location and leaves Bartleby at the former work site. The end of the story describes Bartleby in the Tomb, and asylum. Rumor has it that Bartleby was once employed as a clerk in a Dead Letter Office, and this seems to explain his forlon state. Melville explains that a dead letter office is a terrible place to work; no doubt Bartleby was depressed being surrounded with letters that never made their intended destination. These letters could have contained money, promises, stories about weddings, happy tales written to people who failed to receive them. The symbolism in the story is interesting. Bartleby, like the narrator, live in a cold, impersonal world, set off by a series of walls and dark buildings. The symbol of walls without windows are the boundaries for the disconnected solitary work the five men face. Like hermits, each one rarely interacts with the other, and Melville shows the awful effects of a compartmentalized modern society. What would he think of Americans today who sit at computers and interact only by e-mail? What sad, solitary lives have we wrought? This story is rich with details, and I think you'll enjoy it!
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Summary: The dark side of the human psyche
Review: Herman Melville was one of the truly great figures in 19th century American literature. "Bartleby and Benito Cereno" brings together two of his most brilliant works: a short story and a novella which both illuminate some of the darkest and most frightening byways of the human soul. The first of the two selections, "Bartleby" (also known by its longer title, "Bartleby the Scrivener") tells the story of a very proper Wall Street lawyer whose life and business are utterly confounded by the baffling behavior of his scrivener (professional copyist), the titular Bartleby. Peopled with a Dickensian crew of colorful characters, "Bartleby" is both a Kafkaesque workplace comedy and a profoundly unsettling tragedy. "Benito Cereno" tells the story of Amasa Delano, a Massachusetts-based merchant captain who encounters the Spanish vessel "San Dominick" off the coast of Chile. What unfolds is a disturbing blend of mystery and psychological horror as Delano boards the slave ship, whose crew has been decimated by illness, and meets her captain, Benito Cereno, and his Black servant Babo. "Benito Cereno" is one of the greatest fictional works about the era of slavery; Melville brilliantly satirizes white arrogance while exploring the complex world of 19th century race relations. Together, "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" constitute a superb introduction to a writer of supreme skill. These are works of fiction whose power endures.
Rating: 
Summary: Benito Cereno
Review: Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story about a Spanish slave ship taken captive, and the unfortunate American whaling ship that discovers them. The American Captain, Amasa Delano, and his crew cross paths with the Spanish slave ship, the San Dominick in a bay off the coast of the island of Santa Maria. Captain Delano is immediately astonished at the disrepair of the San Dominick, and especially at the poor health and mental condition of her captain, Benito Cereno. Captain Delano's emotional reactions to what he witnesses while aboard the San Dominick; curiosity, anxiety, and suspicion are excellently described by Melville. Throughout his stay on the San Dominick, Delano is constantly worried that Cereno is planning to attack him, and the liberty the slaves seem to enjoy concerns him as well. The story of Benito Cereno will keep you guessing until the final pages when the mystery of the San Dominick's crew and cargo is unveiled. Despite difficult language, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a great adventure story.
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Summary: Benito Cereno
Review: Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story about a Spanish slave ship taken captive, and the unfortunate American whaling ship that discovers them. The American Captain, Amasa Delano, and his crew cross paths with the Spanish slave ship, the San Dominick in a bay off the coast of the island of Santa Maria. Captain Delano is immediately astonished at the disrepair of the San Dominick, and especially at the poor health and mental condition of her captain, Benito Cereno. Captain Delano's emotional reactions to what he witnesses while aboard the San Dominick; curiosity, anxiety, and suspicion are excellently described by Melville. Throughout his stay on the San Dominick, Delano is constantly worried that Cereno is planning to attack him, and the liberty the slaves seem to enjoy concerns him as well. The story of Benito Cereno will keep you guessing until the final pages when the mystery of the San Dominick's crew and cargo is unveiled. Despite difficult language, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a great adventure story.
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Summary: Benito Cereno
Review: I didn't read the first story, but I read the second (Benito Cereno). It is about a slave ship that comes into a port in central America, and when an American sea captain goes aboard to offer gifts, he notices strange things happening on board. This story is thrilling and I loved it. Things keep happening during the story that make the reader go "what?" "huh?" (in a good way, because it makes you interested in what happened). I couldn't put this book down. The language may be a little hard to understand, and the reader also must look closely at everything Melville says in order to understand what is going on (even though it's not in the least like deciphering a poem). I recommend this to avid readers.
Rating:
Summary: Two Haunting Stories from the American Master
Review: I must respectfully disagree with the Boston reader who asserts that Bartleby is "a case study in clinical depression." That's definitely one way to interpret the story, but it defuses a great deal of the tale's power. If we believe that Bartleby is simply a victim of mental illness, we might begin to believe that if only doctors had Prozac in the 19th Century, poor old Bartleby would have chippered up and gone home dancing. Bartleby's refusal, his famous "I prefer not to," seems more like a deliberate and sane NO. People did know what depression was back then (though it was generally called melancholia, instead). Bartleby's condition (our condition?) is something much deeper, much more terrifying-- the possibility that one can observe the world from a completely rational mind and decide that participation is not worth it. If we decide that Bartleby's problem was depression, must we call Kurtz a paranoid schizophrenic? All of Beckett's characters could use a Xanax prescription, because they seem pretty bleak, too. Bartleby is fascinating because of what we don't know; Melville is the great American exploiter of Negative Capability, Keats's term, defined as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." It is because Melville is willing to refrain from that "irritable reaching after fact and reason" that Bartleby (and Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick) is a story that lingers in the imagination. If we knew why the man simply quit the business of life, if we knew it was a deficiency of chemicals in his brain or whatever, we would not be so haunted by his fate.
Rating:
Summary: Two Haunting Stories from the American Master
Review: I must respectfully disagree with the Boston reader who asserts that Bartleby is "a case study in clinical depression." That's definitely one way to interpret the story, but it defuses a great deal of the tale's power. If we believe that Bartleby is simply a victim of mental illness, we might begin to believe that if only doctors had Prozac in the 19th Century, poor old Bartleby would have chippered up and gone home dancing. Bartleby's refusal, his famous "I prefer not to," seems more like a deliberate and sane NO. People did know what depression was back then (though it was generally called melancholia, instead). Bartleby's condition (our condition?) is something much deeper, much more terrifying-- the possibility that one can observe the world from a completely rational mind and decide that participation is not worth it. If we decide that Bartleby's problem was depression, must we call Kurtz a paranoid schizophrenic? All of Beckett's characters could use a Xanax prescription, because they seem pretty bleak, too. Bartleby is fascinating because of what we don't know; Melville is the great American exploiter of Negative Capability, Keats's term, defined as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." It is because Melville is willing to refrain from that "irritable reaching after fact and reason" that Bartleby (and Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick) is a story that lingers in the imagination. If we knew why the man simply quit the business of life, if we knew it was a deficiency of chemicals in his brain or whatever, we would not be so haunted by his fate.
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