In <em>Bartleby & Co.</em>, an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, <em>Bartleby & Co.</em> could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), <em>Bartleby </em>embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, <em>Bartleby</em> is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.