about "This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral (Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!) in America's Gilded Capital" by Mark Leibovich

 

Mark Leibovich wallows in the networking and social maneuverings in This Town—which is, of course, Washington, DC. He kids DC's political players about the unseemly side of their work but never condemns them. Leibovich paints an absurd picture and sort of shrugs it off. His easygoing prose makes a shrug seem like the natural reaction. This Town delivers the goods for political junkies—especially if you tracked national politics from 2007 to 2013. Hearing how embedded Washington correspondents are is discomfiting. But if disillusion has already set in, the disappointment in This Town lands softly.

something about "Herodias" by Gustave Flaubert

The short piece, "Herodias," appears in Gustave Flaubert's 1877 work, Three Tales. (The other two tales are "A Simple Heart" and "Saint Julian the Hospitalier.") "Herodias" concerns the characters and events surrounding the beheading of John the Baptist.

Flaubert casts as the central figure Herod Antipas, now commonly known as King Herod. At the time of the events, however, Herod was probably referred to as Antipas, and he was seen as more of a governor, a regional figure, than a king. Flaubert depicts Antipas as a weak ruler manipulated by his wife, the title character, Herodias, a princess from a powerful family of vassals of the Roman Empire.

Antipas was unpopular, perceived by his public as sycophantic and idolatrous. Added to the ruler's frustrations was John the Baptist's high-profile condemnation of the marriage to Herodias—a scandal; to marry Antipas, Herodias divorced her first husband, Herod II, Antipas's half-brother.

In Flaubert's telling, Herodias uses her daughter, Salomé, to seduce Antipas and persuade him to take John's head. Flaubert deals us a story rich in politics, sex, and violence, then combines them all in the climactic scene of Antipas's seduction and John's beheading.

something about the weather and power outtages

The soil in the Mid-Atlantic sops up the irony and becomes poison. Blood loosens the ground, and roots stay exposed in the late season of water-cooled air. The thickest trunks pull away when a hellacious wind comes and weakens their will. Yours breaks. Though you're lit up at night, still the main attraction is fallacy.

something about "Billy Budd, Sailor" by Herman Melville

Billy Budd, Sailor is Herman Melville's last novel. It tells us the story of a handsome, well-liked, naive young sailor, Billy Budd, who was drafted into the British Royal Navy in 1797. While at sea, the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, grows deeply envious of Budd and falsely accuses the young sailor of organizing a mutiny--an especially serious charge given that the recent mutinies in the Royal Navy have led to martial law at a time of ramped-up fears of French aggression. When confronted by his accuser in the presence of the ship's captain, Budd clocks Claggart, who drops dead. In the text, Budd's shocking, violent turn seems to erupt from a desperation born of his stutter, which renders him powerless to defend himself with words in the moment. A court martial ensues, and although nobody believes Budd was organizing a mutiny, the officers sentence the young sailor to death. To not execute him would risk encouraging actual mutiny and, therefore, national security. Melville's prose is characteristically and wonderfully eccentric, but the events and themes (law and reason?) in this very slim novel feel undercooked. It was published posthumously and should probably be considered unfinished. The book's latter portion reads like a coda rather than a conclusion.

Note: Is Claggart's accusation leveled out of maliciousness or out of a self-deceiving need?

something about snoops

Some people like estate sales, wandering through a stranger's home, seeing pieces of another life. Some people like being in the office when everyone else is gone or reading a letter written to someone else. You feel distant, tempted to feel, almost involved, but still in control.

something about "On Bullshit" by Harry G. Frankfurt

Frankfurt begins this meditation on bullshit by examining the definition offered in Max Black's 1985 essay, "The Prevalence of Humbug": bullshit is the "deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody's own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes." Frankfurt gets his footing here, but says this definition fails to adequately capture "the essential character of bullshit." Frankfurt next mines a few bullshit-related anecdotes and quotes to uncover his theoretical understanding of bullshit. The somewhat oversimplified synopsis of that understanding is that what is essential about bullshit is that (1) the bullshitter cares not for what is true or false, like the liar and the honest man (in fact, the bullshitter could be saying things that are more or less true and still be bullshitting) and (2) the bullshitter says whatever suits him at the moment in an attempt to deceive his audience about what he is up to and who he is.

The prose in "On Bullshit" is crisp and graciously plain; Frankfurt's essay, an exploratory philosophical analysis, manages to avoid philosophy jargon and name dropping.

Note: This is good:

One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes  that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can  have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.

something on "Here at The New Yorker" by Brendan Gill

Here at The New Yorker is a collection of anecdotes about personalities that contributed to and shaped the The New Yorker. The book also includes some short fiction and nonfiction pieces reprinted in full, as well as cartoons and sketches. This is a book you can keep bedside and leaf through leisurely before sleep. All of it is entertaining; some parts are laugh-out-loud funny.

Note: I enjoyed James Thurber's The Years With Ross a little more than Here at The New Yorker.

something about the mentor

You could say there was something pitiful about her. And, superficially, you wouldn't be wrong. She had these big, scared eyes (the right one maybe popped in a little lower than the left). Under different circumstances, you might have wondered if she was in shock—those eyes always wide, reflective, lacking presence, suggesting vulnerability. She spoke aimlessly, ceaselessly. In groups, she ticked her head like a chicken and registered each person's face, seeking approval there.

something about "The Thanksgiving Visitor" by Truman Capote

The Thanksgiving Visitor returns to the childhood days Truman Capote wrote about in his previously published semi-autobiographical short story, A Christmas Memory. This time, a schoolyard bully, Odd Henderson, menaces young Buddy. To his horror, Buddy's older cousin, Sook, invites Odd to Thanksgiving dinner in hopes of ending the boys' feud. At dinner, Buddy attempts to publicly humiliate Odd, but this revenge scheme fails. Buddy learns about cruelty, the lesson of Two Wrongs, and the dignity of empathy.

After his failed attempt at revenge, Buddy sulks in the shed. Capote writes:

The door to the shed was ajar, and a knife of sunshine exposed a shelf supporting several bottles. Dusty bottles with skull-and-crossbone labels. If I drank from one of those, then all of them up there in the dining room, the whole swilling and gobbling caboodle, would know what sorry was. It was worth it, if only to witness Uncle B.’s remorse when they found me cold and stiff on the smokehouse floor; worth it to hear the human wails and Queenie’s howls as my coffin was lowered into cemetery depths.

Note: The Thanksgiving Visitor was first published in the November 1967 issue of McCall's magazine.

something about "On Her Trail" by John Dickerson

Nancy Dickerson was the first female national political television reporter. In the 1960s, she became a household name while covering the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Nancy created space in media and popular culture that was expanded by Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Megyn Kelly--generations of intelligent, powerful women.

Nancy's son, John Dickerson, wrote On Her Trail, a book about his mother, who died in 1997, and his relationship with her. This book is a wonderful read that is three-fifths traditional biography and two-fifths memoir.

Although the telling is done with love, John does not mythologize his mother. Quite the opposite. Their relationship was rocky until John got a foothold in the Washington press corp and Nancy reluctantly reached retirement. Although she has passed, the relationship lives on. In telling her story, John checks her along the way, calling out her shortcomings (and his), which has the effect of humanizing the both of them.

The advertising copy calls On Her Trail "part remembrance, part discovery"; that description is accurate. John Dickerson shares memories, but much of the book comes out of his research into his mother's personal records. He discovered in her early journals a playful young woman that rarely surfaced after she relocated to DC and broke into journalism. John's writing is clean and personal, touching on the themes of ambition, dreams, beginnings, choices, family, love, and regret.


Note: John Dickerson, also a successful journalist, was a great host on CBS' "Face the Nation" and now co-hosts the network's morning show.

something almost true

I was a member of a show-business family. We were in a movie that was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. I got blackout drunk at the awards ceremony. Early the next morning, I asked someone what happened. He answered, "You won!" I was disbelieving. He added, "Yeah, and you spoke! You gave a speech!" More disbelief; plus anxiety. He showed me a transcript of what I said, and, of course, it was incoherent. I felt ashamed; this would be my legacy.

Note: The ceremony included a great live performance of scenes from the movie version of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

something about Nathanael West's novella, "A Cool Million"

With A Cool Million, Nathanael West mocks and perverts the Horatio Alger myth. The novella unravels the sad story of Lemuel Pitkin, a poor 17-year-old kid from rural New England. When creditors threaten to foreclose on his family home, young Pitkin seeks the advice of the local banker, Shagpoke Whipple, an opportunistic former president of the United States. At Whipple's urging, Pitkin heads out into the world to make his way. But the world thoroughly abuses and victimizes Pitkin: he is robbed, arrested, and beaten; he loses limbs and teeth; even his naive sweetheart is raped and prostituted. Pitkin learns nothing for his trouble and soon dies a humiliated failure. As if that was not enough, Pitkin's death is exploited by Shagpoke Whipple in his political comeback as head of the National Revolutionary Party.

Whipple, embarking on his second act, attributes his initial downfall to conspiring outsiders:

I blame Wall Street and the Jewish international bankers. They loaded me up with a lot of European and South American bonds, then they forced me to the wall. It was Wall Street working hand in hand with the Communists that caused my downfall. The bankers broke me, and the Communists circulated lying rumors about my bank in Doc Slack's barber shop. I was the victim of an un-American conspiracy.

At his nationalist rallies, Whipple evokes Pitkin's story to stoke popular fear and animosity toward immigrants, intellectuals, international capitalists, and political opponents.
 
With this conclusion, West suggests that belief in the Horatio Alger myth inevitably leads to a second myth that explains the failure of the first. The second myth, the Lemuel Pitkin myth, reinforces in the minds of the struggling, embittered white population the idea that they have been cheated out of the American dream by un-American and international forces. The two myths inform a reactionary movement of hostility, fear, and dangerous nationalism.


Note: Can a perception of the past serve as a vision for the future?

something about placelessness

Bending off the highway is an unremarkable, two-lane road that aims toward the river. Going that way you pass a guileless elementary school; a fire station; a frayed church; a pasture (often harboring horses); and another church (this one sturdy and featureless). Then you drive amid woods, turns, and threats of deer crossing. Driveways that draw up to the road fall between these filmy landmarks, and my attention flits down to the houses as I speed this way. House after house withholds the greeting I wish would welcome me, and a low-scoring shame fills the void of no warm memories.

about the battle rhythm

Another dead-inside Monday morning wiggles greasily, greasy into the house and fills it with humid, permanent light. The light shows me what it will be like when my skin is ashen and I'm old and I smell of it.

something about "Potomac Landings" by Paul Wilstach

Paul Wilstach shares with us the life of the the lands pinning in the Potomac River. The encyclopedic Potomac Landings is written with care and traces of affection. Much of national importance in America is rooted in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area (also known as the DMV) along the river. Bits that I found particularly interesting include how many wealthy people settled the area, the plantations, the way children of rich men established estates near each other, and the way those estates became counties.

Covering little bits of everything, Wilstach gives us a book to leaf through. He occasionally indulges in details about, for example, oil lamps. But the bulk of the text traces plantation and estate operations, well-heeled families, social conventions, the landscape, agriculture, architecture, and legal developments.
 
I especially enjoyed stumbling upon brief passages in which the author reveals his talent for literary writing. For example:

So, in brief, civilization came to the Potomac, seated itself at the river's mouth, and began its slow sweep up the shores from point to point, and from creek to creek. It came upward like the tide whose ebb and flow had for ages been as the river's respiration and life. If however, the flow of this tide was slow as centuries, its ebb was eventually just as inevitable as the ebb that twice daily perpetually bares the sandy beaches and the landing piles along its way.

Notes:
-Potomac Landings was published in 1920. I read a 1937 edition.
-The book is somewhat Maryland-centric.

about a late afternoon in November

The woman was hunched forward such that, approaching from behind, I only saw the back of her chair. I would not have even known she was there had the sun setting to the west not pushed our silhouettes up against the wall. In the fading day I found someone who had found privacy. Tonight we will have only a worn-out welcome.

about dementia

I visit my parents and wake up in my childhood bedroom. I walk into the den. Dad, who has been awake for at least two hours, asks me, "Ok, what's next?" I get coffee. "Are you getting coffee?" This is soon followed with, "Are you about done drinking coffee? Are you reading the newspaper?" No more than 45 seconds pass before he asks for a status update. He wants to know what he should be doing ("What you're doing does not concern me, does it? You don't need me for that, do you?"). He follows me around.

He often wants me to stop doing what I am doing so that I will do something else. If he appears to be waiting for me to move, I will move; but when I move, he becomes suspicious of what I am doing and wants me to stop. "Don't worry with that. Get back to whatever you were doing. Ok, go!"

He is worse the next time I visit. He confuses his words and thoughts: "Did you make dinner sweet sixteen?" "Do you use your middle name today?" "In a few minutes, you'll have to take off your blouse. You're way behind."

He becomes disoriented and wants to undress in the middle of the day. Clothes are a fixation for him now. He fingers his shirt buttons and belt throughout the day. He sees you with a soda can; after each sip, he asks, "Are you done with that?" He wants to throw it away. He badgers me until I finish a bottle of water, and then, when mom opens a can of soda, he spits, "Goddammit! We don't have time for that!"

He checks the garage door. He pulls the window shades. He sits in every seat in the room, moving from here to there, sitting in three different seats within 15 minutes.

Dad seems to know his memory is gone. When mom tells him they will go to the store tomorrow, he responds, "My memory only lasts until the last syllable leaves your lips." He says, "Tell me this 2 minutes before we leave."

(posts) Jacques Brel singing "Dans le port d'Amsterdam"

Notes: Janet Morgan Rasmusen died Friday, November 12, 2010, in Dallas. She was 84.

 

something about "Editors on Editing"

The third edition of Editors on Editing is a collection of somewhat specialized and particular essays about the job of editing. The editor, Gerald Gross, solicited mostly new essays for this edition--this is what is meant by "Completely Revisited" in the subtitle. The only essay I found relevant was "Line Editing, The Art of the Reasonable Suggestion."

(posts) a drawing of Coolidge

about a softie, a nancy boy

At the airport. This 40-year-old dad-guy in khakis drank half a beer and now he's acting like he's a man. He pulled from his luggage a little Nerf football, dropped back, and threw it toward his kids. The ball fluttered and dropped about three feet in front of his kids' toes.

In those moments, I saw him lower his inhibitions some. Fun dad came out to play for a while.

He started smiling as the idea popped into his head. "I'm gonna seize this moment and really connect with my son in front of all these people." And then to not connect on the play. Broken up by his own fear of letting go of that little, fluorescent softie; letting go too soon, not following through. Or holding on too long, as with any dream he's ever had. Hit by reality after the play was called dead. The pass falls short. He falls short.

It was the beer's fault. His wife has already discussed this with him. You can tell that she's already drawing up a demeaning play to focus his attention once again. Sportsman. Dreamer. Alcoholic. Beautiful.

Stretching out, trying to break the plane. At the airport. Secretly hoping this plane is the one that finally crashes.


Note: Co-written by my best bud.

(posts) Pinback's "Sediment"

something about "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy

This remarkable novella drags a well-heeled federal judge through the ultimate crisis.

Tolstoy does not flatter our protagonist in The Death of Ivan Ilych. In an efficient account of Ilych's professional and social advancement, we learn that the man is shallow, conceited, and vain; he is a social climber and, having climbed, immediately became condescending (though not unkind) in his privilege.

One of the remarkable things about this novella is that these traits do not make Ivan Ilyich a villain; instead, they make him average.

In the story, Ilyich's health declines and he suffers exquisite pain in his illness. Incapacitated, the pointlessness of his life imposes on him. And the degree of suffering mystifies him because he has only ever done what he thought he was supposed to do: develop a career, get married, have kids, get established. But doing what was expected could not spare him an agonizing, slow death. In the end, the inauthenticity of his life leaves him lifeless.

My favorite parts--all of these include a comment on averageness and unoriginality:

On Ivan Ilych's parentage:

He was the son of an official who had worked his way through various ministries and departments in Petersburg, carving out the kind of career that brings people to a position from which, despite their obvious incapacity for doing anything remotely useful, they cannot be sacked because of their status and long years of service, so they end up being given wholly fictitious jobs, anything from six to ten thousand a year, and this enables them to live on to a ripe old age.

On Ivan Ilych decorating his fine new house:

But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming--everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class.

On Ivan Ilych's trip to the doctor early in his mysterious illness:

He was made to wait, the doctor was full of his own importance--an attitude he was familiar with because it was one that he himself assumed in court--then came all the tapping and listening, the questions with predetermined and obviously superfluous answers, the knowing look that seemed to say, "Just place yourself in our hands and we'll sort it out, we know what we're doing, there's no doubt about it, we can sort things out the same way as we would for anyone you care to name."

Note: The Death of Ivan Ilych was published in 1886. Tolstoy was supposedly suffering a personal crisis of meaning.

a note about too long ago

We walk by the ivy-covered fence and kiss on the mouth. We wonder who will die first, and we don't appreciate anything.

(posts) "Nevermine" by Forth Wanderers

about resilience

The door leading from our offices into the north-end hallway always slams shut when someone passes through. After conditions in the hothouse finally wilted my ego, the latest slam shook my petals off clean. I paused and considered all the posters on the walls throughout the building. Cautions, reminders, notices, promotions. You become inured, indifferent, then unnoticing, and, finally, illiterate. Those posters distract from what really matters. The time had come to go to the beach.

A three-hour drive and the Atlantic shoves up against the continent. This late in the season, a sandy crowd of mostly mature folks who sit under beach umbrellas and sun hats do crossword puzzles. These people are literate. And none of them test the waters. They already know what I am only just learning: the ocean, reliable and unceasingly self-assured, beats you every time.

something about "Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote"

This provided some relaxing nighttime reading. The two parts I enjoyed most: first, from Observations, the entry on Humphrey Bogart, which includes this:

Never mind that he might play poker until dawn and swallow a brandy for breakfast; he was always on time on the set, in make-up and letter-perfect in his part (forever the same part, to be sure, still there is nothing more difficult to interestingly sustain than repetition).

Second, "A Lamp in the Window," a wonderfully wrought short that suddenly sweeps the ground out from under you at the end.

(posts) "Cowboy Dan," song (minus video) by Modest Mouse

Note: "And I want out desperately / Can't do it, not even if sober! / Can't get that engine turned over!"

a note [a]

about dehumanization in routines

The day after my birthday, I grew sensitive to all the things that flash at me and beep at me, and I felt I did not have time for these things.

something about Franz Kafka's diaries, 1909-1923

 
I brushed against Kafka's sense of isolation as I read this collection of his diary entries. The experience of reading this is alienating because there is no point of entry; the text and its author seem impenetrable. I was stuck outside, roaming a perimeter while he repeatedly disappeared in himself. But this reading experience is consistent with the themes found in his formally published work: anxiety, absurdity, and, of course, alienation. These entries date from 1910 to 1923, a year before the Czech writer died (probably from complications from tuberculosis) at age 40. I was stirred by his brief descriptions of social awkwardness and family tension. He was often frustrated with himself for not writing or for writing poorly. I do not think this work is all that readable; my attention would fade when he made random notations on dreams and story openings, which he often did.

Note:
Is this an invasion?

(posts) two performances of "Oh, Sarah" by Sturgill Simpson

or

a hasty and uninvestigated thought on "The Hunger Games"

In the the movie, "The Hunger Games" (the first in the series), the worst violence does not happen during the games. The movie is half over before the games even begin. The worst violence occurs with the social destruction caused by commercial exploitation—the tearing apart of families and friends and the compromising of values for money.

about a sunny winter day in St. Louis

Try to recognize the city's constancy. Mortar, red brick; work, manufacturing, beer; centered, unswept; the seam of the nation's identity. (Blight, represented by vacant, deteriorating husks in some sections, yes; but, even there, where history has paused, one can identify with the condemned.) Remember driving down Chouteau one February morning, old red-brick buildings on your right, and how rusted-out gutters, flecked in sea green, plunged down from the rooftops to lie shedding in time's gardens of grit and debris.


Note: Also remember the colors of the changing Maples on X Street, next to the house; Broadway's beautiful industry buildings (never could figure out if people were actually working there); mothers walking kids to the school buses on Chippewa; and smelling bread while walking to the front gate on a chilly day.

something about Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"

Most critics recognize The Sun Also Rises as Hemingway's best work. Published in 1926, the story follows an American expatriate traveling from Paris through Spain in the company of other American and British expatriates. Literary commentary inevitably refers to how the novel captures the Lost Generation's sense of disillusionment. Sure enough, Book I of this slim novel passes time in Paris, and there we see how unbearable disillusioned people can be, conspicuously bored and uncomedically witty. But after Book I, The Sun Also Rises reveals itself to be a potent, beautifully rich novel. Even the waste and cruelties of Book I become meaningful when recast in the violence at the fiesta.

There are so many wonderful lines. Examples:

Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest.

And,

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

And that phrasing is called back later:

The bull gathered himself, then his head went forward and he went over slowly, then all over, suddenly, four feet in the air.

But maybe my favorite part is the chapter in which Jake is drunk in his hotel room, thinking through his views on life. This chapter includes the following:

Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.

I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had.

Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

(posts) a sketch of Mao Zedong

about another dumb dream

The President was riding a missile that he ordered launched, like Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove. With nothing to lose but this life, I hopped on. We soared the skies, and I looked down in fascination at the goings on below--ships sailing seas, wars being waged, people busying beaches and boardwalks. The Earth was a map. I considered our inevitable descent, and how my sense of wonder would shrink into terror and grief. The missile wavered; it would soon begin to sink, then turn slightly this way and that in a gentle turbulence. Finally, we began our approach. At 15,000 feet I bailed, foolishly thinking I might somehow escape. Pushing to the end of the map, the missile, with the President aboard, dropped sharply to Earth; but I fell off, beyond the map page. I tucked and rolled across ground, scratched to a stop, and rose to my knees. A buddy from work was there. I hugged him tearfully, tightly, sobbing, destroyed.


Note: I know that people do not generally like to hear about other people's dreams.

(posts) "Hardball" by D.R.I.

something passing

Here, stashed behind a woodpile, miles from the Capitol, loneliness surfaced at first in moments. The times waiting linger like an anchor. The feeling that one should engage more with the world takes root. But, why, when doing so always ends the same?

something from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" is one of my favorite pieces of writing. The story's themes of isolation, conformity, and human folly echo loudly. But it is Melville's humor that I heard clearly during my most recent reading. My favorite passage comes when the lawyer, after dismissing Bartleby on a Friday, returns to work Monday morning to find his scrivener still occupying the office. The lawyer, narrating, begins thinking through his next move:

“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went downstairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there anything further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again.