Bartleby the Scrivener — Herman Melville

Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world -- even those daunted by Moby-Dick -- Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?