"I would prefer not to - that's the glory formula, and every enamored reader repeats it in turn," writes Gilles Deleuze in an essay on Herman Melville's legendary short story Bartleby. In it, a thoroughly well-intentioned narrator and lawyer cannot prevent a clerk employed in his Wall Street office, from politely and consistently breaking away and increasingly refusing to work.

B for BARTLEBY is a documentary film essay about a very personal confrontation with this narrative: It becomes a re-encounter with a deceased companion, who wanted to film Bartleby all his life. Then a journey to the USA, to the farmhouse of Herman Melville. Here today's "classic" of American literature, conscripted the women of his family to "write off". We see performative experiments with women "learning" Bartleby and men practicing writing; we see everyday encounters with Bartleby in a cafeteria, a youth club, a center for the stranded. and a legendary offstage theater in New York. Goose quills scurry across blank pages, actresses memorize text that might be their own, costumed museum employees lead tours of "original showplaces," animals (beloved by Herman Melville above all else) glare at us. "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" It's about the desire and curiosity to find out how to peacefully cope with a personal visitation.