Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener

"Literary legend" (New York) Gay Talese revisits his pioneering career profiling the many "nobodies" who make NY so fascinating, culminating with the strange & riveting story of Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who blew up his Upper East Side brownstone—& himself—rather than give up his beloved patch of NYC real estate.

"New York is a city of things unnoticed," a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote 60 years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by noticing those details others missed, celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story of NY & of America unfolded. Inspired by Melville's great short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," Talese now remembers the unforgettable "nobodies" he has profiled in his pioneering career—from the NY Times's anonymous obituary writer to Frank Sinatra's entourage. In thebook’s final act, a remarkable piece of original reporting titled “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” Talese presents a new “Bartleby,” an unknown doctor who made his mark on the city one summer day in 2006. 

Rising within the city of NY are about one million buildings. These include skyscrapers, apartment buildings, bodegas, schools, churches, & homeless shelters. Also spread through the city are more than 19,000 vacant lots, one of which suddenly appeared some years ago—at 34 East 62nd St., between Madison & Park Aves—when the unhappy owner of a brownstone at that address blew it up (w/ himself in it) rather than sell his cherished 19th-century high-stoop Neo-Grecian residence in order to pay the court-ordered sum of $4 million to the woman who had divorced him 3 years earlier. This man was a physician of 66 named Nicholas Bartha. On the morning of 7/10/06, Dr. Bartha filled his building with gas that he had diverted from a pipe in the basement, & then he set off an explosion that reduced the fivestory premises into a fiery heap...