Notes on Bartleby
2026-10-18
Starting today, I will be writing a quasi-sci-fi story, "Bartleby". Hard to say how adamant will I be, so this might collapse after a couple of chapters, but we'll see.
I was inspired by "Rick & Morty's" approach to sci-fi. It's closer to props, but at the same time it gives them more freedom of storytelling. To ask more philosophical questions about consequences of some ideas. And sometimes it's just about having fun.
The zeroth tranche was actually meant to be another story, but I couldn't fit it in with anything until it clicked in when I came up with Bartleby. Then I decided it's a good idea for a cold opening.
Bartleby was inspired by a single screenshot from "No Man's Sky" that I saw somewhere in 2024 and never forgot. It was haunting me ever since, but I couldn't have come up with anything more concrete. This changed when I was reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Passenger" and got to the chapter where Bobby meets the Kid and the Kids clothes are described as flapping in the wind. And then boom, I have an idea.
As for the name, I took it from "True and the Rainbow Kingdom", a cartoon that my daughter used to watch, like, ten years ago. True, the main character, had this black cat companion whose name was Bartleby (which I spelled Bartelby back then, due to how it sounds). His personality made me like the name. I also recall that one of antagonists name was just that; the other one being Loki. Bartleby and Loki.
However, before I started writing, I checked what its etymology is. To my surprise, it dates back to a short story from none the other than Herman Melville, the autor of "Moby Dick". Bartleby is also the one who popularised the phrase "I would prefer not to". I suppose it will be tempting to put this words in my Bartleby's mouth. But I shall resist.
Alright. So, if sci-fi will serve for props then what's the intended genre? I am thinking a Western mixed with noir slash hard-boiled but in space.
Being McCarthy (as well as Ádám Bodor) aficionado, I decided to go with imitating his style, ditching commas wherever possible and quote marks. This aligns with what I've read a while ago: that in a book, dialogue is also action. When people talk and tell something, it kind of becomes a story within a story. I am enchanted with this fluidity where the narration flows into dialogue, etc. This was especially strong in Bodor's prose.
Often when writing, I try to think about things being described as if they were meant to end up as a film. Sort of visual framing but with words. Not this time, though. I decided to be brutalistically true to writing materials and treat the text as the text primarily. If I want to make fluid transitions between narration and dialogues, I need to abandon the whole film-centric pretences.
2026-10-24
The first proper chapter of Bartleby's adventure is here: "Bartleby: Tranche 1". The one sparked by "No Man's Sky" screenshot and one sentence from Cormac McCarthy's book.
One of the inspirations was again "Rick and Morty" where they often end up in diners located on asteroids. You would think that they shouldn't be able to walk on it as if there was a normal gravity. :D I guess it's much easier for anyone to pretend that there's the same gravity everywhere, from filmmakers who don't need to bother with special effects, to their viewers who mostly don't really care about that.
Also, I admit that the idea of a planet that exploded but somehow kept its core intact and now all the pieces of rock are orbiting it is openly unrealistic. But as I pictured it, it was so cool that I couldn't pass on it. Could be that I really liked the floating islands in "Tears of the Kingdom".
The interesting thing about writing in episodes and without the grand plan is that I can reconfigure it. Initially, Bartleby was meant to do a couple of assignments on the Destructured Planet and move on. But then it struck me that it might be a good setting for something more connected. Which might change again as nothing has been written to that end.