Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, book of a lifetime: A gripping, puzzling novella

It's a source of bafflement to me that Bartleby the Scrivener is not the most famous and celebrated book by Herman Melville. It's a flawless and ambiguous work of art – good-ambiguous, not why-hasn't-it-got-a-proper-ending? ambiguous. As the story progresses, the reader follows the narrator in becoming increasingly mystified and fascinated by the evasive protagonist.

Plot-wise, it's simple: Bartleby is a clerk, and the book's narrator is his boss. At first, Bartleby is a diligent employee. Then, asked to do something different from his usual work, he replies, "I would prefer not to." His expression of negative preference amounts to a refusal. Before too long, Bartleby decides that he would prefer not to do anything at all. When asked why, and what he might rather do instead, he won't or can't answer. His boss doesn't want to have to fire him, and of course Bartleby would prefer not to leave the office…

I first read this puzzling novella 23 years ago, and am as gripped now as then. Unlike other mysteries that I have long since forgotten, I will never give up on my attempts to decode Bartleby. I find him endlessly compelling. What's going on in his mind? Something? Nothing? Should we see him as a real person or as a symbol? If the latter, then a symbol of what?

I used to believe that Bartleby was an allegory that demonstrated the impossibility of being true to oneself at the same time as complying with social convention. I have come to feel, though, that it's the narrator who holds the key to the book's meaning. While everyone else in the office resents, avoids or gives up on Bartleby, his boss tries to help him. Through the narrator's eyes we see Bartleby not as a nightmare employee, but as a man who has hurt no one, insulted no one, attacked no one. Bartleby, blank in character, tests the characters of others – and most fail. Only the narrator retains his compassion in the face of the inexplicable, while others vilify, sneering at the weird outsider.

Bartleby is pure enigma. Offices should be kinder to enigmatic staff. Bartleby is also Everyman, wanting only to be left alone and not made to do anything – anything at all. I can identify with that feeling. Thanks to Bartleby the Scrivener, I often allow myself to think "I would prefer not to". Sometimes I even allow myself to say it out loud.

Sophie Hannah's novel, 'The Telling Error', is published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton