Masaomi Kobayashi著. The Multiverse of Office Fiction: Bartlebys at Work. Palgrave, 2022. A5判xvi+225頁, N.p.

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville’s 1853 classic, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction―fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees―as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office.

Part I Reaching Out

1 Introduction: Edward Hopper, or Bartleby on Bartlebys

   The Official World

   Beyond the Bartleby Industry

   What If Bartlebys Were Women?

   Into the Vast Ocean of Office Fiction

2 Advice Columnist, Recall Specialist, Cyber Capitalist: Bartleby and His Kindsmen

   Behind the Screen, Behind the Desk

   The Citywide Office

   The Christ Business: A Full-Time Job

   150 Years after "Bartleby"

   The Nationwide Office

   Paper, Soap, Heaven

   The Ubiquitous Office

   Into the Web of Life

   Into the Sphere of Death

3 At Work, at Home, at Life: Bartleby and His Kinsdwomen

   The Office; or, the Competent Women

   "Good in Business But Not in Love"

   The Silence That Followed

   The Impossibly

   "Ah, Sure, Miranda"

   And More Sisterhood

   "What Do I Want Out of Life, Anyway?"

Part II Farther Along

4 Backward, Forward, Abroad: Bartleby and His Contexts

   The Clerks as a Text Within the Text

   Downward Career move from the Officeholder

   The General Post Office, London, or the Workplace like a Marketplace

   The Detective-Clerk: "An Epistolary Voyeur"

   The Dead Letter and Backward Extension

   Gothicizing

   Work-Life Breakdown

   Kafka's House Imagery and Samsa's Dynamic Family

   "What Is It That So Frightens All These Men?"

   Toward a Narrative Poetics

5 Post-9/11, Posthuman, Post Office: Between and Beyond Bartlebys

   With 9/11, After 9/11

   Rachael Rosen and Her Evolution

   Away from Hu/Man-Centered Workplaces

   Post-Work and the Meaning of Life

   Life Goes on with Work

   The United States Mails

   Prose as Poetry

   From Poet to Novelist

6 Epilogue: Every Office Tells a Story, and So Does Every Bartleby

   Can Barleby Speak?

Bibliography

Index