We hear a lot these days about sympathetic characters, but what is required in order to make us sympathise with a fictional character? For many readers, it seems, the character must be pleasant-mannered and morally virtuous – and of course these qualities should not be underrated – but I must confess that I’ve always tended to sympathise and identify most with two kinds of character in particular: those whose peculiarities and deficiencies prevent them from fitting in well in ordinary environments, and those whose lives are hampered by their inability to solve the mystery of a significant other. It contains three of my favourite things in literature: mystery, rebellion, and a strange person or people. It is also so much more than the sum of its parts, and impossible to reduce to a moral or message. However many times you read it, it remains the baffling tale of a peculiar man, and never loses its mystery or intrigue.
I’m not sure if Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ is a very long short story or a very short novella, but I’ve always thought of it as a story and, ever since I first read it for my English and American Literature degree in 1991, it has been my favourite short story.
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