Bartleby & Co.

Bartleby & Co. (Spanish: Bartleby y compañía) is a 2000 novel by the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas.

Bartleby & Co.

Author	Enrique Vila-Matas
Original title	Bartleby y compañía
Translator	Jonathan Dunne
Language	Spanish
Publisher	Editorial Anagrama
Publication date	1 February 2000
Publication place	Spain
Published in English	2004
Pages	184
ISBN	978-84-339-2449-0

Plot

A Spanish office worker wants to be a writer but struggles to follow up his obscure first book. He takes a sick leave and starts to write footnotes to a non-existing text. He comments on writers whose careers stalled, such as Herman Melville, Robert Walser, Felipe Alfau and J. D. Salinger. He turns the improductive central characters from Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Letter from Lord Chandos" into role models. He goes through various reasons to not write.^[1]

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called the book a "wry, mind-bending delight" and associated its literary mode with Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.^[1] Mark Sanderson of The Guardian called the book original and "a postmodern paradox, something out of nothing" which with its literary references will make almost anyone "feel woefully illiterate - but then that is part of the game".^[2]