Working your Own Way: Jenny Odell’s Connection to Bartleby

In her book How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell explains and creates analogies by incorporating different works of other authors to tie ideas and concepts together. She uses various nonfiction and fictional stories such that it increases the odds that one of her readers has read at least one of the pieces before since many of the works mentioned are classics. By doing this, Odell can take her image that she is portraying and then step back to portray the same image while doing it at a different angle. There are many versions of a story, but all versions usually have the same meaning; therefore, there are many versions of an idea in which Odell uses these alternate versions to emphasize her concept.

Many of the times Odell also references stories with other stories to build off one another and demonstrate how all the pieces and concepts tend to connect. By doing this, Odell can depict a certain scenario and turn it into a bigger real-life situation. In Chapter 3 of How to Do Nothing, “Anatomy of Refusal,” the “third space” is mentioned where she explains that it is another frame of reference “for someone who cannot otherwise live with the terms of [their] society, the third space can provide an important if unexpected harbor” (69). Moreover, Odell is saying that the “third space” is something where someone may tend to do something that is not necessarily expected in society such as randomly stopping at a green light. After her reference to Diogenes of Sinope, Odell quickly switches to another reference of Bartleby with the iconic phrase “I would prefer not to” in Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”

Further explaining what the third space is and connect this with the way that she ties Bartleby into this concept, it can be thought of as a place where only you compile your own thoughts. This third space is a spot that all ideas and actions take place inside of one’s mind that does not need to be seen right by society. For example, things that could be put into this third space that Odell mentions are actions regarding improper manners, unusual actions such as stopping at a green light, or anything else that would seem unusual and doesn’t necessarily follow the “rules” of society. As I had specified before, Odell connects the theories mentions in her book and uses outside novels and stories to strengthen her argument that supports those theories. In this case, Odell’s theory is the “third space” and the story she is using to strengthen that argument is “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville. The argument that Odell strengthens from the use of Bartleby is explained next.

For the 3 pages that Odell talks of Bartleby and his “linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss” (69), she focuses on the different scenarios such that the phrase “I would prefer not to” would be interpreted as. If someone were to get into an argument with their employer and did not want to do the work they were asked to do, a typical response that would probably get them fired would just be a “No I won’t” or “I don’t want to.” But if they were unable to do the task that their employer presented them, a polite response would include “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time to do that right now.” In this case though, “I would prefer not to” implies that Bartleby is not saying yes and that he is not saying no. Instead, he is giving a passive-aggressive type of response despite that all these responses would be an act of refusal. The fact that Bartleby intends to refuse the orders of his employer, represents a situation in society that would be deemed unreasonable, thus, validating it to be a type of situation you would associate with Odell’s third space where you are breaking the “rules” of society.

In the short story, before Bartley joins the Lawyer’s office, the Lawyer describes the two other scriveners working in his office as well as an errand boy. The first scrivener is Turkey, who has been causing problems. He is an excellent scrivener in the morning, but by the afternoon he becomes more prone to making mistakes, dropping ink plots on the copies he writes, and becomes more flushed, with an ill temper. The Lawyer offers a solution to Turkey by asking him to only work in the mornings, but Turkey argues with him, so the Lawyer gives him less important documents in the afternoon. The second scrivener is Nippers who works opposite to Turkey because he has trouble working in the morning. Until lunchtime, he suffers from stomach trouble, and constantly adjusts the height of the legs on his desk as trying to get them perfectly balanced which implies that he has OCD. In the afternoons, Nippers is calmer and works steadily. The errand boy is Ginger Nut where his nickname comes from the fact that Turkey and Nippers often send him to pick up ginger nut cakes for them.

The Lawyer then hires Bartleby and the first impressions of the scrivener seem to be admirable. He writes day and night, and his output is immense as he greatly pleases the Lawyer with the quality or quantity of his work. One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs to be examined so he calls Bartleby in, but Bartleby responds, “I would prefer not to.” This response amazes the Lawyer, who has a “natural expectancy of instant compliance.” He is so amazed by this response and the calm way Bartleby says it, that he cannot bring himself to scold Bartleby. The Lawyer calls in Nippers instead to examine the document. This first refusal becomes shocking and is disregarded at first, but the more Bartleby “politely” refuses to do what he is asked to do, the Lawyer catches himself in a dilemma of what to do himself.

Compared to the other scriveners Turkey and Nippers, Bartleby is always asked to do something when he refuses not to. In the beginning, both Turkey and Nippers were offered to work the half of day in which they are the most productive, but they too refused to do what the Lawyer had insisted on them. Melville displays the two different types of refusal between the characters and only one of the ways is accepted throughout the story. Turkey and Nippers relieve each other like guards during the workday therefore their refusals cancel one another out. However, with Bartleby’s refusal to do what is asked of him by the Lawyer, he practically becomes useless to the lawyer’s needs. The thing that takes an even farther step forward is when Bartleby begins to sleep at the office, refuses to leave the office, and refuses to leave the office even once the Lawyer office moves proves that there is an extent to when the phrase “I would prefer not to” becomes an issue and is not so polite anymore. By even overdoing this passive-aggressive type of refusal for a response, Bartleby gets himself fired, and even then, he becomes a burden instead of a helper by refusing to do what the employer asks of him.

Although there are many interpretations and theories over the message that Melville portrays through Bartleby, I believe that the one that Odell references for her novel and that is the most parallel to the “third space” is related to the idea of not wanting to be working like everyone else does in a standardized society. In other words, it is natural for the human mind to want to do something different than what is idealized. This can be seen by many people who quit their boring jobs and do something that they enjoy but may not seem like an actual job to supplement the workforce. For example, many YouTubers like one, in particular, being Roman Atwood who quitted his job at a rope factory and ended up creating prank videos on YouTube where he now created his own brand “SmileMore” and is now a millionaire. This relates to what Odell mentions with the “third space” because the third space is another meaning of rebellion and doing things that may not follow the “rules” of society.

If you are told to keep walking straight, you may want to start walking backward out of spite. If you are told to examine a paper, you may prefer not to. If you are told to clean your room, you may prefer not to. All these examples are scenarios of rebellion and doing something that is not expected of you.

By referencing Melville, Odell can further analyze and portray the message that she has decided to focus on, and from this reference, the reader is exposed to another level of understanding where this message is solidified. Such as the example in Chapter 3 with Odell’s idea of the “third space” that is related to the phrase “I would prefer not to” by Bartleby.