Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila Matas and translated by Jonathan Dunne, is a small masterpiece of literary self-effacement. It is presented as a series of 86 footnotes to an otherwise unwritten book devoted to writers who stop writing (Robert Walser who went mad, or Rimbaud who wandered off after his spectacular debut) and writers who never actually write at all (like Socrates—who leaves the penmanship to Plato—or Paranoid Pérez, a character created by Antonio de la Mota Ruiz, who never gets to author a book because any time he has an idea for one, another character in the story writes it first).

Vila Matas lauds writers whose humility forbids them to attempt the impossible feat of writing accurately, writers who—properly conscious of the vanity of literature and the irrelevance of acclaim—beg to be forgotten, writers who, like Melville’s Bartleby, “would prefer not to.” This most amusing and inspired meander through the history of creative self-negation is a must for the serious self-loather who wishes to go for a higher degree.