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Confidence Man

Name: Confidence Man
Author: Herman Melville
ISBN: 9780140445473

by Herman Melville, Stephen Matterson (Noted by), Stephen Matterson

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Overview

Long considered Herman Melville's strangest novel, The Confidence-Man is a comic allegory aimed at the optimism and materialism of mid-nineteenth-century America. A mysterious shape-changing Confidence-Man approaches passengers on a Mississippi River steamboat and, winning over his not-quite-innocent victims with his charm, urges them to implicitly trust in the cosmos, in nature, and even in human nature -- with predictable results. A satiric and socially acute work that was to be a further step away from his sea novels, The Confidence-Man represented a departure for Melville. Yet it confused and angered reviewers who preferred to pigeonhole him as an adventure writer. Some have argued the book was a joke on the readers loyal to his sea stories, but if so, it backfired. Dismissed by critics as unreadable, and an undoubted financial failure, The Confidence-Man's cold reception undermined Melville's belief in his ability to make a living writing works that were both popular and profound, and he soon gave up fiction. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that critics rediscovered the book and praised its wit, stunningly modern technique, and wry view that life may be just a cosmic con game. This text of The Confidence-Man is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).

Synopsis

The text of The Confidence-Man reprinted here is again that of the first American edition (1857), slightly corrected.

The New York Times

The oddities of thought, felicities of expression, the wit, humor, and rollicking inspirations are as abundant and original as in any of the productions of this most remarkable writer.

About the Author, Herman Melville

Herman Melville's legend is as mammoth and elusive as the whale that established it. The author's Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale stands as one of literature's greatest epics, a story of mythological proportions that was grounded in real life and a new way of storytelling. Melville's work, underappreciated in its time, remains as much subject to debate and interpretation as it was when he first caught the public eye with his South Seas adventure, Typee, in 1846.

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Editorials

The New York Times

The oddities of thought, felicities of expression, the wit, humor, and rollicking inspirations are as abundant and original as in any of the productions of this most remarkable writer.

Conjunctions

I love the book, more than Moby-Dick, more than any native novel I can think of. Melville is the muse of my America, and The Confidence-Man is my vade mecum. I've read it over and over, and sometimes tried to imitate it. And yet. . . . Is there a more lighthearted and amusing tale that's meaner and more misanthropic?
—Jim Lewis