Twelve Years a Slave (1853)

Now a major motion picture—or two, if you count the PBS TV movie from 1984, Solomon Northup's Odyssey, directed by Gordon Parks and starring Avery Brooks (which I haven't seen yet). Let me be clear that I believe every word—if anything, it's the happy ending that's hardest to get past here. It all makes perfect sense when you consider the attitudes that were common in that period of American history. The prices of slaves alone makes apparent how valuable they were in terms of property. So it makes sense that free blacks in the North would be in danger of kidnapping, or even systematic kidnapping rings. It's the same perverse incentive that produces chop shops today. Solomon Northup in that regard is not such an unusual example, he was just unlucky. As with most slave narratives, particularly so close to the Civil War, this also has a political point to make. Northup writes about issues familiar to this genre of activist literature: the cruel treatment and punishments, the specter of white masters out of control beneath a thick crust of rationalization (the Bible says it's OK, it's the law, Africans are obviously inferior, etc.), and of course no legal standing whatsoever. On winning his freedom, after yes 12 years, Northup's first order of business is to return to Washington, D.C., to press charges against his kidnappers. But the laws in D.C. don't grant him the legal status to testify. If you've seen the 2013 movie most of this story will feel familiar. The movie is actually quite faithful to the narrative, though excising some scenes such as the trial in Washington. Northup is plainspoken and explicit about his years as a slave, notably on the punishments. This book was part of the abolitionist movement gaining momentum in the 1850s, published just the year after the iconic Uncle Tom's Cabin (not a slave narrative but well-researched on the realities of American slavery). Twelve Years a Slave was reprinted once after the Civil War, in 1869, and then languished for nearly a century, when renewed interest in African American life and literature restored it to consideration. All of the slave narratives I've read are good, but this is one of the best. Northup's skill at storytelling is exceptional and his story is long, interesting, and horrific. Somehow, his voice is mostly filled more with love and patience, though his rage gets the better of him sometimes. Amazing book.

In case it's not at the library.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853)

Read story by Herman Melville online.

I had forgotten that Herman Melville gave his classic short story the subtitle "A Story of Wall-Street." At first this confused me, thinking of the modern version with skyscrapers and superfast computers. But I think a fair translation of the subtitle is actually more like "A Story of Temping." That's the dynamic it has always had for me (at least, after I'd spent some time temping and then circled back to the story) and ultimately it makes sense of what's often taken as a mystifying or even whimsical and certainly odd little tale. A scrivener in the 19th century was a low-level clerk doing the work of a photocopy machine much more slowly. A photocopy machine might be the best way to think of Bartleby, whose famous calling card is "I would prefer not to." The phrase smacks of countless fits of pique I've seen in office temp workers, including myself a few times, not to mention photocopy machines. You are often right up-close and personal with the absurd in such positions. This is also a situation comedy episode of deference and circumspection beyond reason. Melville's story describes the point at which Bartleby may be said to have snapped, though it is a gentle and barely audible sound, and then the aftermath. The narrator is a principal at the law firm where Bartleby was employed. One day he imperiously calls Bartleby into his office to assist him with proofreading a document (accomplished by one person reading the original aloud while the other scans along on the copy). The abrupt interruption is just one of those indignities of the office day—in 1853 when Melville wrote this story as much as in the 1990s when I toiled as a scrivener (then called "word processor"), and no doubt today as well. No doubt. It's the way office life and work goes. People melt down and blow up and leave behind shrapnel in the form of anecdotes told over and over. In this story it is Bartleby's dogged refusal to work again, with his simple affirmation, "I would prefer not to." This is not an isolated case. I knew a temp who was habitually late to his job—the front-line receptionist for a work group, who spent his long days answering calls and taking messages. One day the entire group was scheduled for a daylong morale-building field trip event. But they couldn't leave the building until Michael (the Bartleby in this story) arrived to "hold the fort down" all day by himself. The group manager was a tiny woman in her '50s who dressed very smartly and liked things to run efficiently. She was furious he was late and dressed him down in front of everyone. He waited for her to leave an opening, probably a question of some kind, to which he replied in a stage voice projected to the rear of the group, "Oh shut up you old cunt, I'm here now." Needless to say he was fired on the spot. Perhaps he works now in the same dead letter office where Bartleby finally arrived. Ah Michael! Ah humanity!

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville (Library of America)