"A sensitive and responsive work of criticism . . . . McCall's critical perspective is shaped by the experience of being a producer, as well as a consumer, of literary performance. His pages, at their best, resemble an extended preparatory meditation or prologue to reading, an instructive service performed by one artist on behalf of another, whose work appears to invite the solicitous eye of a fellow craftsman. . . . An accomplished novelist in his own right, McCall—like the long list of artist-critics whose work has played such a formative role in the development of American literary study—adapts his compositional experience and instincts to the role of an accomplished reader. . . . At the end of his book, McCall sets aside his own mediator's role to reprint Melville's story. The Silence of Bartleby dramatizes the extraordinary vitality of attentive reading and then steps aside to allow its own readers to practice their rejuvenated powers on a masterpiece."—Douglas Anderson, American Literary History "The single most sensitive response to Melville's genius since Warner Berthoff's The Example of Melville."—Andrew Delbanco "McCall's book is alive and bright and sane . . a breath of fresh air."—Milton R. Stern, author of The Fine-Hammered Steel of Herman Melville