The power of no

Not a self-help blog on assertion. Quite the opposite unless you call in Bartleby. For reluctant writers who dislikes the inbred snobbisme of the writing profession, the pretensions of academia, and the vulgarism of the publishing world, our writer’s friend’s recommendation of Vila-Matas’ Bartleby & Co. will be manna. Vila-Matas, part of the new wave of Spanish talent that includes Javier Marías and Arturo Pérez-Reverte, has produced a work of literary and invented authorities on the refusal to write. For those of us who have resisted the urge to write for over 30 years and have only recently succumbed, Vila-Matas provides enough factual and fictional justification to down one’s pen forever. The only thing that's left to write about in this blog may be the figurative and literal deaths of the author. Until then.