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A Genealogy of Refusal : Walking away from crisis and scarcity narratives

QualityLand

Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it. In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop that he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself. Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's first book to be translated into English, is a brilliantly clever, illuminating satire in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and George Orwell that offers a visionary, frightening, and all-too funny glimpse at a near future we may be hurtling toward faster than it's at all comfortable to admit. So why delay any longer? TheShop already knows you're going to love this book. You may as well head to the cash register, crack the covers, and see why that is for yourself.

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Proud Descendents who "Prefer not to" So where do we find Bartleby the Scrivener today? Here are a few gems:

Bartleby has a significant entry in the Old School Role-Playing Community's 2010 compendium Petty Gods: Revised & Expanded Edition where he appears as "The Petty God of Inactivity." Bartleby's character responds to any and all requests with "I would prefer not to." Destroying Bartleby is impossible.

Bartleby's famous line appears verbatim in Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's brilliant book published in 2020 about what happens when The Shop, which knows what you want, sends you something you really don't want. How do you say "No"? How do you return something if you have prove the algorithm wrong to get the company that sent it to accept the return? Jacques, a nurse in the story is pressured by the president to turn off her life support "for the good of the country" and responds: "I would prefer not to, Madam President."

Bartleby also makes an appearance in Toronto writer Natalie Zina Walschot's Hench. It's a story about a data analyst with some unusual clients that just about any librarian can relate to! In it, the protagonist, Anna, rubs her throat where a superhero's not so super grip has left welts where his fingers have dug into her skin. Her co-worker Greg urges her to "have someone look at that" and she dismisses his attention by saying verbatim: "No, I'd prefer not to." His response is priceless: "Fine, Bartleby," Greg says. Anna does Bartleby plenty proud in Hench. Here's a promo that's a nice on-ramp to Anna's set-up in Hench.