Bartleby

plural Bartlebys

1. A person, usually a man, who chooes not to participate in many activities because he would prefer not to.

   A brilliant study of negativity, Carol is the Bartleby of American cinema.

   1925, The New Yorker, volume 91, F-R Publishing Company, page 73

   3 more examples

   One suspects that the Bartleby of 1890 would have been encouraged to blow off some steam by splurging at one of the new department stores up Broadway.

   2004, Andrew Lyndon Knighton, Idle Threats: The Limits of Productivity in 19th-century America, University of Minnesota, page 21

   A lot of his releases have titles shat begin with "Con", but there's no scam to his scheme; he's just the Bartleby of the avant garde. Tour? Do press? Collaborate? He would prefer not to.

   2007, The Wire, numbers 275-280, C. Parker, page 61

   In interviews, however, Padrós has insisted that he was never a fully integrated member of the group either socially or professionally and rarely participated in Aixelà's collective film projects because he always had to leave early to return to Terrassa to go to work at the bank the next day. Joan M. Minguet aptly describes Padrós as the Bartleby of Spanish and Catalan film: both a part and apart.

   2020, Steven Marsh, Spanish Cinema Against Itself: Cosmopolitanism, Experimentation, Militancy, Indiana Unviersity Press