These three essays orbit Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" from successive distances. The first attacks the narrator, the second attacks the attack, the third removes the hope of a clean vantage point. Each piece eats the previous one. Together they ask whether any act of understanding can avoid being an act of consumption. Part I: The … Continue reading The Bartleby Triptych: On Vampires, Critics, and Hunger
Tag: literary criticism
Kafka’s Genocide Manual
The work's genius isn't that it shows suffering—it's that it shows how ordinary people become capable of murder through paperwork. The Metamorphosis operates as instruction manual for ordinary evil, and readers miss this because they're too busy feeling sorry for the bug. Gregor never stops being human. That's not ambiguity—it's the text's central fact. An … Continue reading Kafka’s Genocide Manual
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