Bartlebying
I’m off to Shanghai for a few days. Here’s an important short story: Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. The story is illustrated with contemporary photographs by Paul Ford.
Will post as often as I can. I asked Kermit for tips on haggling with vendors in Shanghai. He says my opening bid should be 20 percent of the quoted price, and the closing bid should be no more than 30 percent. Bert says I should bring a large calculator. If the vendor names an atrocious price, I should punch “0.7734” and show it to the vendor upside down (“Hello”).
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 26th, 2008 at 08:44
Whahaha…now i remember some more other words you could read with the calculator upside down. And tell you, there ARE words LOL creative minds when we were young LOL
March 26th, 2008 at 11:10
My Communications 10 prof at UP Baguio required me to write a reaction paper on Bartleby. There are 7 to 10 interpretations of Bartleby by different people, mostly intellectuals, that came with that drasted reading. Example: Bartleby is a schizophrenic, then proceeds to support that claim. My favorite was “Bartleby is a Woman” Hahahaha. THe article wasn’t that funny but i found the premise funny because for everything that is hard to interpret, or confusing, most are quick to put the blame on a woman.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:04
Have a great trip(!) and remember that winning a customer-vendor dispute starts with the eyes. Sometimes it ends with the fists, but we’ll trust you to handle any extremities as appropriate :).
Cheers.