"Bartleby" is a tragicomic text--though, for me, the comedy outweighs the tragedy. "I would prefer not to" is the comic mantra, which one might imagine as being pronounced in a half-proud, half-awkward way, maybe with a slightly affected tone to the ears of his coworkers (for it sounding so foreign, so put-on-- perhaps even to Bartleby at first, when he hears the words coming out of his mouth). He does not say, "I don 't want to"-- he chooses his words very carefully; it is a hesitant, noncommittal denial, oddly polite for being, in many circumstances, flatly rude and unaccommodating, unagreeable. The other scriveners remark how his diction is "queer,"--they would never use "prefer" in this way... What follows from this is an absurd chain of