Liam O'Neil

   Bartleby was an individualist who was hired to copy law documents and to model a calm demeanor that his co-workers would hopefully emulate. Bartleby calmly did these things very well, but only briefly, for he quickly preferred not to copy law documents and, being an individualist who acted in line with his preferences, he would not. Bartleby was seemingly endowed with his calm demeanor and evidently always conformed with this gift, probably by not preferring to be anybody but himself, for his calm demeanor never varied. Yet that quality proved entirely worthless to his employer—it lost all its modeling value when Bartleby refused to work.

Adapted Classics will soon present two human interest stories by Irish author Donn Byrne. Both stories are about professional boxers who fight opponents in the ring while simultaneously battling psychological demons within themselves. “Irish” follows a popular, young boxer on the rise who knowingly risks his spotless record by taking a match he believes unwinnable for money he needed to support to his unappreciative, delusional father. The second story, A Man’s Game, tells of an aging boxing champion who is harassed by his conscience in the ring for accepting a match he didn’t want and an outcome he couldn’t abide for bribe money he would use to advance his son’s education. The fighting scenes in these stories are vividly described, partly owing to Donn Byrne’s experience as an amateur boxer who attained the lightweight championship while attending Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

It is beyond dispute that Leo Tolstoy scorned all manner of institutional authority. Each of the three stories in Tolstoy Illustrated hint at different aspects of his disdain, a point-of-view he broadened in other writing to include all conceivable feelings and attitudes that institutions transmit to adherents or victims under their influence or control. In this lightly edited and greatly truncated version of Patriotism and Government, an article he wrote in 1900, here’s what Mr. Tolstoy thought about one such feeling—patriotism.

Tolstoy Illustrated: Three Stories by Leo Tolstoy contains three illustrated fables adapted by Leo Tolstoy, then adapted once again by me for the purpose of fitting them with illustrations. Tolstoy adapted these and many other moral fables hoping to convert readers, especially young readers, to genuine Christianity. This was the motive behind most of his literary work from about the age of 50 until the age of 75. Of course, to be honest, as time has played out, he would doubtlessly be gravely disappointed to know how little affect his writing would have inspiring such conversion.