The Confidence-Man

by Herman Melville, John Dugdale (Editor), Tony Tanner (Introduction)

Male, female, deft, fraudulent, constantly shifting: which of the masquerade of passengers on the Mississippi steamboat Fidele is the confidence man? The central motif of Melville's last and most modern novel can be seen as a symbol of American cultural history.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels, Literature, American, 19th Century, Literary Fiction

361 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1857

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Herman Melville's last strange novel and it is obvious why, a very nebulous plot doesn't help. A Mississippi steamboat leisurely floating down the river, picking up and disembarking passengers along the way, from St. Louis to New Orleans in the antebellum south before the Civil War. Set on April Fool's Day ...a hint to the narrative, apparently on board is a confidence-man hence the title ( maybe more than one, possibly many) . A glimpse into the struggles of Americans on the edge of civilization the untamed West nearby, Manifest Destiny the 19th century doctrine of the nation, has come to fruition. However people on the Fidele the name of vessel are a gullible lot, believing nefarious characters with their sob stories and get -rich -quick schemes...as a person remarks "A Ship of Fools". A cripple begs for alms but some do not believe the infirmity others even doubt the color of his skin, especially a man with a wooden leg no sympathy from him, a poor Mexican War veteran 1846- 1848, he says but is it quite true with a ...
hard heart, like his false appendage. An old miser gives money to a perfect stranger, a dubious conclusion follows in order to invest on the stock market and the slick speaking con man, a silver tongued devil absconds without leaving a receipt. Snake oil salesman promises cures for the hopelessly infirm, the overprice bottles are as effective as a fish on land. The Cosmopolitan man as he is known on board the grand Fedele , ( faithful in French) is very persuasive well dressed, a calm nature, a real gentleman in appearance somehow getting the boat's cynical barber to trust his customers, giving credit and taking down a sign which states the opposite view, the businessman will regret this error soon. The passengers begin to ask questions but the man or men are great speakers and ill people want miracles, it still is true today sense goes out the window, only recovery of their health matters. Melville in the novel, makes fun of Emerson and his disciple Thoreau in an around about way the former whaler knows about life, not impressed by a silly philosophy. The book will infuriate numerous readers because of its hidden meanings and the unclear intrigues. Secrets never revealed who is the villain, yet humans are basically unchanged from era to era the good, the bad and the victims.

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An arduous read. I read 4 pages a day. Very tough going but I finished it. Only great admiration for the author pulled me through. Not recommended if you have not read his other works. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, of course, but for something lighter try Typee and Omoo. Both are South Seas adventure stories. Later, when you're hooked, after the diverting White Jacket and Redburn and the stories, you may want to move on to the oddments like this and the virtually unreadable Pierre: or, The Ambiguities.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short review: Complicated, dense, angry, and funny too (though in that depressing kind of way).

Longer, more rambling comments and some quotes:

If one is going to try and come up with some sort of definition of a "masterpiece" surely one of the criteria must be an almost permanent relevance - that something of what is said about our species remains as true now as it was when the author picked up his pen.

This wonderful book, and a quick google shows me I am far from the first to think this, speaks directly and clearly of our current Trumpian, islamaphobic age, of our conned and conning selves.

" Ah, sir, they may talk of the courage of truth, but my trade teaches me that truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies, lies, sir, brave lies are the lions!"

Current U.S politics in a nutshell.


"Oftener it falls, that this winged man, who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into the clouds, then leaps and frisks about with me from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is bound heavenward and I, being myself a novice, am slow in perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent that I should admire his skill to rise..."

Is almost too perfect a description of Trump.

And the extraordinary section on indian-hating (for which one can easily replace the word "indian" with "muslim") - (note that, in the following quote, these are not the words of our author, but those of a judge, as reported by another character - there are many layers here, in other words)

"..are all Indians like Mocmohoc?--Not all have proved such; but in the least harmful may lie his germ. There is an Indian nature. "Indian blood is in me," is the half-breed's threat.--But are not some Indians kind?--Yes, but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed simple--at all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the red men being taken from the active, and those accounted wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind Indians have but proportionate influence. And kind Indians may be forced to do unkind biddings. So "beware the Indian, kind or unkind," said Daniel Boone, who lost his sons by them.--But, have all you backwoodsmen been some way victimized by Indians?--No.--Well, and in certain cases may not at least some few of you be favored by them?--Yes, but scarce one among us so self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his personal exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off against the contrary experience of so many others, as that he must needs, in a general way, think well of Indians; or, if he do, an arrow in his flank might suggest a pertinent doubt.

"'In short,' according to the judge, 'if we at all credit the backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be taken aright, must be considered as being not so much on his own account as on others', or jointly on both accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed or scalped. What avails, then, that some one Indian, or some two or three, treat a backwoodsman friendly-like? He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from me, give him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how know I what involuntary preparations may be going on in him for things as unbeknown in present time to him as me--a sort of chemical preparation in the soul for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for malady.'

"Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words, you see, but the judge found him expression for his meaning. And this point he would conclude with saying, that, 'what is called a "friendly Indian" is a very rare sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness exceeds that of a "friendly Indian" turned enemy. A coward friend, he makes a valiant foe.”


And then, for those of you who prefer their novels to come seasoned with a little meta:

"If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on.

But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always, they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency, which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted, considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. ....But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some mathematicians are yet in hopes of hitting upon an exact method of determining the longitude, the more earnest psychologists may, in the face of previous failures, still cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly discovering the heart of man.

But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains but to turn to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of thought to that of action."

This is a difficult book. The sentence structure is complex - Melville seems to be under the impression he will be paid by the comma - and the focus of the critique is much more complex and subtle than it may appear. One has to read very carefully and closely (particularly in the second half) in order not to be led astray (to be conned as it were - there is most definitely a sense in which the con man being laid bare here is the writer, and us his victims.). The section on indian-hating can be, and has been, completely misread. Any reader of Melville must recognise where he stands when it comes to pedlars of race-hatred and, accordingly, should not be misled by words coming from his character's mouths.

I am far too lazy at present to bother to write more (and to whom would I possibly be rambling, when so much already exists on this book?). Suffice it to say that any of you curious about whether or not he has another masterpiece up his sleeve other than the Whale Book really should go give this a try...

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that could’ve gone on forever, concluding only when the author’s spleen and/or exuberance gave out, and Melville admitted as much with the last sentence

Something further may follow of this Masquerade.

but this reader’s glad it didn’t, as his enthusiasm for the book faded toward the end. Which isn’t to knock the book necessarily, since The Confidence Man is almost more of a conceptual piece than a novel; meaning that the idea is as important, or even more, than the actual execution; and the idea is a winner.

The entire novel takes place aboard a boat going down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans, and all the action takes place on a single day, April 1. The main character (or characters) is a confidence man who shape-shifts into at least six personages during the journey, from a crippled black man to a gregarious white cosmopolitan. But then this is all inference by the reader, as Melville treats all his manifestations as separate and distinct beings, playing the confidence man himself, never admitting the deception.

All of these avatars of the con man attempt to fleece their fellow passengers in one way or another, but as they’re doing it they are also, through Melville, calling attention to hot button issues of the day, from Native American widows and orphans needing assistance to a proliferation of so many different bank notes issued by so many different banks that people couldn’t tell what was real money and what wasn’t to the popularity of Emerson and Transcendentalism (which Melville apparently loathed). So Melville uses the format as a vehicle for social commentary, but I think his larger concerns were with personal identity and faith.

Reading The Confidence Man can induce a very curious state of mind, a state in which one doesn’t know how to take anything, as if presented with a substantive riddle with no solution; so reading the book itself becomes an issue of faith, of moving forward through irreducible uncertainty. Much of this is due to the fact that the confidence man is one of, if not the most, sympathetic characters on the boat. As he moves from personage to personage imploring them to have faith, to have trust and confidence in them, the few who refuse to fall for his ploys are the meanest most ingrown characters of the bunch; as if by refusing faith, even in a flimflammer, is to reduce and circumscribe one’s life to such a degree as to become a crabbed asocial nutjob.

In this way Melville emphasizes the importance of faith, but from a cynical angle, as if it’s the only option when living in a world where nothing is as it seems, where nothing can be trusted in the traditional sense; in effect saying that when living in a world where nothing can be trusted the only healthy option is to trust everything. This can be construed, in terms of faith as a concept, as a kind of nihilistic Christianity, or even more accurately, Buddhism, as there seems to be know over-arching “god” on Melville’s boat, just a big cloud of uncertainty and deception, of Maya. And reading the book itself gives the feeling of navigating through Maya, of navigating without any certain knowledge other than faith.

[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crees que el dinero es el único motivo para los dolores y los peligros, el engaño y el mal en este mundo. ¿Cuánto dinero ganó el diablo por engañar a Eva?

Herman Melville es y será uno de mis autores favoritos. De hecho, Moby Dick es mi libro preferido.
El Embaucador es la historia de un farsante de poca monta y charlatán que se sube a un barco que va de Mississippi a New Orleans y, disfrazándose, va engatusando a pasajero desprevenidos, formado por banqueros, filántropos, políticos y otras personalidades de la época (tengamos en cuenta que El Embaucador es su última novela larga, publicada en 1857), usualmente para sacarles plata, utilizando como recursos de convencimiento la caridad y la confianza.
Este embaucador puede camuflarse bajo el aspecto de un sordomudo rubio con un cartel a cuestas, un negro con las piernas deformadas, un hombre vestido de luto con un crespón, un doctor en hierbas con sobre todo color rapé, un representante de la "Oficina de Informaciones Filosóficas", y un filántropo de ideas descabelladas, pero nadie arriba del Fidèle puede serle indiferente.
¿Es un charlatán y un embustero? Seguramente, pero también en sus exposiciones y proposiciones descubre el velo de la hipocresía y el egoísmos de esas personas que encuentra en el barco, muestra el costado menos brillante del alma humana.
Cargada de mucho humor negro, absurdo y parodia, la novela es también una contundente oportunidad para Melville, ya que le permite imponer una fuerte crítica al "dios" dinero y el capitalismo de la época que sigue vigente hoy día.
Para esta época, el autor ya había prácticamente tirado la toalla luego del revés sufrido tras el rotundo fracaso de Moby Dick, que paradójicamente se erigiría en una de las más grandes novelas de la literatura universal, a partir de su reedición de 1924, lo que posiciona a Melville como otro de los tantos escritores geniales incomprendidos en su época y que hoy son gloriosos.
En líneas generales me gustó, aunque el libro es un poco ecléctico (de hecho pareciera ser una novela inconclusa). Tal vez, me sentí por momentos un poco despistado como le sucedió al público de 1857.
De todos modos, le doy cuatro estrellas, ya que volviendo a lo que declaro en el comienzo de mi reseña, Herman Melville nunca dejará de estar entre mis escritores preferidos junto con Franz Kafka, Fiódor Dostoievski y Edgar Allan Poe.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Confidence Man is a very cryptic book. Poorly received during its time and was the last book he published in his lifetime. It is part morality play, part theatre, part absurd - it is very hard to label in fact. At the beginning, the revolving characters reminded me of Chaucer's Tales (a possible inspiration for Melville?) amd then I also thought of Richard Linkletter's cult classic first movie, Slacker where each character introduces us to a new one and then vanishes. If I compared A Brief History of Seven Killings to Caraveggio, I would compare The Confidence Man to a Rembrandt painting - a quiet chiascuro lit by candles and snuffed out at the end. It is a very post-modern narrative structure complete with recursive stories and chapters which break the fourth wall where the narrator addresses us directly. I would have given it 3.5 stars, but since it is Melville and it was so influential on Pynchon and DFW, I'll settle with four and encourage you to try this one after you conquer the White Whale.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combustible, brilliant, dialectical, like a Marx brothers film in the mid American 19th Century. Literally filled with ramshackle, charming, sleazy, opportunistic, phantasmal, eccentric, grotesque, gaudy, loquacious characters who are all out to

* Talk- to anyone, about anything, especially their own opinions, biases, agendas, philosophies and observations

* Trick- (see above) that is, to "con" anyone they can get their hands on to abide by or follow or merely acknowledge their particular grievances and demands

* Make $- beg, borrow, sell, steal, panhandle, wheedle, commiserate, gyp, or simply buy and sell

* Survive- this ship of fools has a definite Melville-ian touch of foreboding, decadence and chaos. Nobody here gets out alive, if you will. Everybody's flying by the seat of their pants and everyone is (or seems to be) desperately trying to talk themselves out of thinking about it for very long, if at all.

"The Confidence Man" serves as a devastating critique of the rootlessness of American life and the chaotic fabric of the society we know a tad better (a tad, I say, a tad!) than our ancestors did more than 150 years ago. The formlessness of many of the usual social blocks- class, hereditary privilege, indigenous roots in the soil, etc is very much part of the drift and sway of the Fidele, as it heads down the Mississippi river (like, O I dunno, some other guys did once or twice) and into....whatever...

The whole experience of reading this text (Novel? Digression? Dialogues? Sketches?...never mind writing the damn thing in the first place. What was that like for poor tormented, incessantly metaphysical Melville?) has everything which has now known to be categorized as 'Post-modernism': discordant narrative, free interplay of signs and identities and constantly re-imagined borders of the self, language, the world at large. the humor, the self- awareness of the narrative creating itself out of itself, the self-mocking overtures of any definitive statement or final Logos....

In a way, it sort of reminded me of Richard Linklater's film "slacker", in that it has a similar rambling, spontaneous, chain of conversational quality. The camera is always moving from table to table as everyone carries on their conversations at any spot at which they happen to be: Smurfs, political insights, Madonna's pap smear, suicide notes, conspiracies and conversations.....

It's absolutely indispensable reading for anyone who is, like me, obsessed with the "psyche" or "soul", "spirit" or "inner nature" of America.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 2 out of 5]

...what is this novel? is it a novel? is it a collection of vignettes? is there a plot? honestly, who knows?

Following up the critical failure of Moby-Dick, Melville decided to pen his final novel, The Confidence-Man. I'm not even sure if I can give a plot summary here. It's set on a steamboat on the Mississippi and we sort of jump from character to character as they each are involved with backstories and plots that don't particularly amount to anything.

This book is just so odd. I genuinely have no idea what to think of it. In parts it's funny and in other parts it's completely incomprehensible and inpentrable. Honestly, I can only really compare it to something like Finnegans Wake or other famously obtuse novels.

I do have a feeling that the problem is with me, however. I think I have to admit defeat. I've a feeling that this is a novel I'll have to revisit, maybe in 40 years time. So, please, await my review.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction, by Stephen Matterson
A Note on the Text
Bibliography

--The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Notes

Appendix A: 'The River'
Appendix B: James Hall's 'Sketches'

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dünyanın her yerinde karşılaşılabilecek üçkağıtçıları anlatıyor roman, iki bölüm şeklinde. İlk bölüm hikaye tarzında beş-altı üçkağıtçı öyküsü içeriyor. İkin ci bölüm daha durağan ve felsefi anlatımlı. Kitapta bahsedildiği gibi "üçkağıtçıların kişilerarası bir kefillik sistemi vardır" sözünü kanıtlayan bir roman.

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really peculiar. The blurb on the back of my paperback says that the book “survived the dismal reception it received in 1857”. Having finished reading it, I can see why its reception was dismal. It is a combination of of vignettes featuring fast talking con men and their targets, philosophical debates and hypotheticals suitable for an ethics class. Getting through this book, particularly the more philosophical parts, felt like trudging through wet sand. “That each member of the human guild is worthy respect, my friend, rejoined the cosmopolitan, is a fact which no admirer of that guild will question; but that, in view of higher natures, the word sublime, so frequently applied to them, can, without confusion, be also applied to man, is a point which man will decide for himself; though, indeed, if he decide it in the affirmative, it is not for me to object.” Melville certainly could do better.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Confidence-Man was published on April Fools Day, 1857, a particularly apt date for this confounding novel to appear. By any measurements, it is a difficult book. It lacks coherent narrative form. It abounds with nebulous symbolism. The Confidence-Man of the title might be one man, talented at disguise, several men, or a Mephistophelian shape changer. This ambiguity is certainly intentional.

Instead of any discernible narrative arc, the book consists of a series of long conversations between the Confidence-Man (men?) and a plethora of riverboat passengers. All these conversations seem illustrative of a single pessimistic theme, that:
“all humanity is made up of fools and knaves, and that the knaves grind the fools the way horses grind oats.”
Rather than provide resolution or explanation, the ending delivers only more vague symbolism — the blowing out of the last lamp in the boat’s cabin at the end of day.

This novel is confounding as its face-changing title character. Was it a sly middle finger from Melville to an unappreciative public? (Melville forsook the novel form after The Confidence-Man, publishing only poetry for his remaining 34 years.) It certainly delivered a withering critique of Melville’s contemporary culture. Why should you read this curiosity of 19th century literature? It abounds with Melville’s erudite symbolism, and his sly sense of humor peppers the narrative. It won’t be to all tastes, but it does have its rewards.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

An American Book of Job or Canterbury Tales (Antebellum Tales?) filled with Melville’s erudite musings, digressions, and ability to stretch a metaphor into unusual and contradictory shapes. Also a kin to Gogol’s Dead Souls but a little more successful than that book, but, to Gogol’s credit he did go nuts and not finish the book; and also Melville hits closer to home with concerns over the medical industry, credit based economy, genocide of the Indians, and man’s place in the universe, than does Gogol’s parade of Russian weirdos and grotesques. This book is a pretty rough read; no central character, almost no names for the characters, dense prose, and at least one character is a shape changing “devil” or trickster spirit (Or an “angel” as it implies). A wild sense of humor pervades the proceedings especially in the chapter headings (if you do nothing else flip through a copy of this book for them).

[Οδυσσέας Μουζίλης · Rating 5 out of 5]

Έχετέ μου εμπιστοσύνη!

https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2021...

[Ben Winch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real life should be exacted by anyone, who, by taking up such a work, sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn, for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any one should clamour for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, for any cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is to divert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.

Well said, man! And, in The Confidence Man, the last thing on Melville’s mind is fidelity to reality. For that reason, and for its particular, night-scented, theatrical atmosphere, I loved this, despite that I couldn’t tell you rightly what it’s “about”, or even follow its convolutions, at times. I picked it up, put it down, read other books between, lingered over it for 2-3 months; lucky, then, that it was plotless. At base level, what kept me reading was atmosphere, and sheer pleasure in language, and the way its characters (ill-described, without backstories and masked as they may have been) spoke, always, so convincingly – not that their speech was peppered with slang or “true to life” (in fact it was almost Shakespearean), but it burst forth, came unforced, seemed natural/inevitable, as of beings – maybe human, maybe other (“You can conclude nothing absolute from the human form”) – hashing harsh truths in spirited debate. Contrasted with a spate of small-press, contemporary, “experimental” works – which, uniformly, lacked this alive-seeming speech – The Confidence Man came to seem a lifeline, paradoxically, to something “real”. Not that I enjoyed it, entirely. In the words of a critic I don’t know of (John Bryants), “Eventually the reader’s mind short-circuits.” But as in the prose of Beckett, the placement of a comma could, at once, redeem it. (Am I the only one who laughs at the commas in the above-quoted passage? Melville’s pedanticism, I’m sure, is self-conscious.) Some days (or nights) I was daunted; I read something else. But some nights it hypnotised me. What can we have confidence in? And is he who tests our confidence angel or devil? If he has to test it, you might say, he too lacks confidence. In this refractive, self-perpetuating inquiry I lost myself. His “most perfect book”? (H. Bruce Franklin in the 60s.) I’m not familiar enough with Melville to know, but there is a kind of perfection – maddening, impenetrable – here. A 19th century Thomas Bernhard with mirrors on the Mississipi, in the key of black. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll finish Moby Dick.

If ever, in days to come, you shall see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and, partly through love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand with the world, and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin to yourself, then will you do as one I now dream of once did, and like him will you suffer; but how fortunate and how grateful should you be, if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy again.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are all human beings, are we not? And I too, by taking a gander around this here goodreads site, would claim that we are all book lovers, are we not? Do we not all find comfort, pleasure, and even sustenance from the artfully bound vellum which surrounds us? Of course we do! We live off of these books! We integrate them into our very lives and livelihoods! Else why would we even be on this site in the first place?

But I've already touched on the heart of the matter. Sustenance. To be thought of as our nourishment; that which keeps us living, day by day, in order to interact with and enjoy the world around us. Books are our very sustenance, and in this case, more so than even money. For a man can go a day without food, but can he go a day without thoughts, ideas, and dreams? Of course not! For if he were to do so he would stoop to a level below humanness; to exist in such a wretched state is not to live, but to merely exist, and to be forced to merely exist is a fate worse than death itself.

So I ask you this, my dear goodreading friends: If a man were to come across your path, so wretched as to be devoid of any of the benefits books bring, would he not be eminently worthy of your confidence and charity? We have already established that to be deprived of books is even beyond tantamount to being deprived of food, so should we not help those without books over those even without food? If a man be prostrate and begging before you for money to buy, not food or wine, but books, is it not incumbent upon you to give him a small loan or gift out of the goodness of your heart and the confidence of which you hold your fellow man? I daresay it is! Else, as we have explored before, you have condemned said man to a fate worse than death!

I know you would not do such a thing to your fellow human being. You, who have so many books already, and who can spare such a paltry amount of money for the purpose of a simple book for your fellow man, would not show such a lack of confidence in humanity. Would you not even hope for the same treatment in return, if the situations were switched? Of course you would, for your confidence in people is admirable and moral.

You are a good human being. I have confidence in you. I know this and have faith in your confidence, so I fear I must, to my shame, admit to you the unfortunate circumstances which have befallen me. I find myself in desperate need of a new book, you see. This reviewed book, by the surprisingly witty Herman Melville who skewers American society with his satire, was my last book. I fear I have no further means to acquire another book any time soon. I am out of my very sustenance of life! You must not let me fall to such a despairing fate! Please, my good friends, a simple loan for some additional books is all I ask. You may send it in the mail, and may God have mercy on me that the check arrive in time, else I shall surely fall to oblivion. I require your confidence, my dear friends; now please express your goodness and humanity with some simple money for me, out of the charity of your hearts. And when you are needing aid in the same way, hopefully others will take your example, and stand firm to their confidence as well.

[İlkim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hiç bana hitap etmeyen, takip etmekte zorlandığım bir klasik oldu malesef.

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel is timeless, only Melville’s convoluted sentences give an indication of the period in which it was written and set. The story(ies) take place on board Fidele, a passenger steamer plying its way along the busy river. People are coming and going all the time, the flotsam and jetsom of life on the Mississipi. The reader has to be constantly on guard, along with her/his fictional counterparts in order not to be “taken in” by the fraudster, ‘con’ man, call him what you will. Such people can come in many guises, financier, politician, clergyman, all are “salesmen”, one way or another. Today they may be money laundering, selling or fighting Brexit perhaps?

Is it healthy always to be on one’s guard, always distrusting. Is man essentially good or evil and what of Christ’s teaching in all of this? He too is on the boat somewhere, it seems to me.

[Burak Uzun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Şüphesiz şu kitabından sonra “okuduğum en dahi yazarlardan biri” diye anabilirim Melville'i.

Bir gün dilsiz bir adam Mississippi nehrinde seyreden Sadakat isimli gemiye biner ve bir levhaya, “Merhamet, aklına hiçbir kötülük getirmez” yazar. Sonra bütün yolcular, karakter karakter bir düşün yolculuğuna çıkar. Bu yolculuk toplumsal ve siyasal eleştirinin kıyılarında çarpa çarpa seyreder.

Sonsöz'de “neşeli bir imha şöleni” ifadesi kullanılıyor ve bence şu romanı en iyi ifade eden tanım bu.

[Vaso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Το ποταμόπλοιο Φιντέλ, ξεκινά μια Πρωταπριλιά, να διασχίσει το Μισισιπή. Οι επιβάτες του ανήκουν σε όλες τις κοινωνικές και οικονομικές τάξεις.
Ανάμεσα τους υπάρχουν και κάποιοι που ως σκοπό τους έχουν την εξαπάτηση...Ή μήπως είναι μόνο ένας ευφυής άνθρωπος, που υιοθετεί διαφορές και διαφορετικές προσωπικότητες προκειμένου να πραγματοποιήσει τον σκοπό του?
Είναι δυνατόν ένας ζητιάνος, ένας βοτανοθεραπευτης κι ένας κοσμοπολίτης επιχειρηματίας να είναι το ίδιο πρόσωπο?
Οι περισσότερες συζητήσεις ανάμεσα στον πρωταγωνιστή και τους συνομιλητές του έχουν να κάνουν με την εμπιστοσύνη, την εξαπάτηση, τη θέληση να πιστέψεις.
Χρησιμοποιώντας με ωραίο τρόπο παραδείγματα από παγκόσμια έργα, καταφέρνει να επιτύχει το σκοπό του. Να τον εμπιστευτούν .
Σε αυτό το τελευταίο του μυθιστόρημα, ο Melville χρησιμοποιεί διάφορες τεχνικές. Υπήρξαν στιγμές που νόμιζα ότι παρακολουθούσα κάποιο θεατρικό κι άλλες που η πρόζα του ήταν τόσο δυνατή που το μόνο που έκανα ήταν να ξαναδιαβάσω το κομμάτι.

Είχα την εντύπωση αρχικά ότι θα με δυσκολέψει. Τουναντίον..
Μου άρεσε πάρα πολύ η φιλοσοφική ανάλυση που έκανε όσον αφορά την εμπιστοσύνη γενικότερα.
Τελος, θεωρώ ευφυές το κλείσιμο του βιβλίου. Αυτό θα πώ μόνο.


Πόσο εύκολα άραγε μπορεί να επηρεαστεί κανείς από την σωστή χρήση λόγου και επιχειρημάτων ώστε να αλλάξει εντελώς γνώμη?

[bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a year in which I’ve already read Waiting for Godot; Absalom, Absalom!; and The Passenger Duology, this book being the wackiest, densest, and most brain-frying of my literature experiences in 2023 speaks volumes. Still processing so much about this puzzling story, but it’s Melville once again being a master at what he does best, which is mounding his tales with interminable layers of meaning and leaving his audience with haunting stops after pages of (albeit philosophizing) hilarity. Comfortable with calling this his best work barring The Whale, but I still have quite a bit to read from Herman (Pierre and Clarel look promising), so who knows?

“Something further may follow of this masquerade.”

[L.A. Starks · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Confidence-Man, published in 1857, is best read by those interested in historical American literature and pre-Civil War nineteenth-century history. Melville's writing, characteristic of the time, is dense. Descriptive paragraphs are weighed down with appositional phrases--it is just a different style.

I read the book straight through but would have done better reading it like a textbook, making frequent reference to the end-notes and spending more time understanding the language.

As the end-notes make clear, the book is rich with allegory and references, especially Biblical. In fact, the book is the opposite of what today's writers are told about "keeping the story within the four corners of the page."

So why read The Confidence-Man?
The Mississippi River remains a great setting. Melville's riverboat anticipates Mark Twain's novels, both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Most interestingly, the Missouri/Mississippi River setting and main character also anticipate 21st-century Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

There are other confidence-people throughout the book. Of course, with 20-20 hindsight, we know the Civil War is coming and we look for hints. This book was written as P.T. Barnum was becoming famous, and we can clearly see Melville's fascination with him.

The Confidence-Man was written after the then-popular Omoo and Typee and after Melville's opus, Moby Dick. The book evinces considerable cynicism--scams are run by more characters than just the confidence man. Again, the doubt and hypocrisy are representative of the times. Missouri, and the entire U.S., would soon boil into war on the issue of slavery.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

”There are doubts, sir, […] which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.”

This is probably one of the saddest, and therefore wisest, things any of the characters say in Melville’s novel The Confidence Man, the last one he was to have published in his lifetime – and it means a lot because this fascinating book is one that is full of mild sadness about the nature and the condition of man, sadness, though, that is benevolently hidden beneath a veil of humour and learned crankiness and that has a hardnosed barber say things like

”I sadly fear, lest you philanthropists know better what goodness is, than what men are.”

Though this book expounds the nature of confidence in its various facets, paradoxically, it raises doubt upon doubt in the reader’s mind, leaving him, all in all, clueless as to the motives of the confidence man, whom we accompany throughout his campaign of deception aboard the Mississippi steamer Fidèle on an April Fool’s Day. Not only do we not know for sure how many identities he adopts but neither what the ulterior object is that he tries to achieve. Can it be money only? Because if it is, he is anything but particularly efficient, seeing how much time he invests to worm small sums out of some of his victims. There are even moments when the reader has the impression that the confidence man, especially in his guise of the cosmopolitan, is not even human, but, as the barber later puts it, a “man-charmer”, and when he seems to adopt the likeness of a snake, which gives him a touch of quite another time-honoured cosmopolitan, the one of the cloven foot. This is when we remember the misanthropic warning of one of the passengers:

”[…] Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve?”

And here we may come back to the quotation I chose to introduce my review, qualifying it by saying that even though one man may not resolve another man’s doubt, if that man be given to a certain degree of general distrust, a person may yet find it in himself to settle his doubts by coming to his own conclusions and trusting the workings and whisperings of his own mind. No one else’s thoughts might probably help you come to terms with this Delphic Melvillian masterpiece.

On the surface, the plot is quite simplistic, and there is actually not much of a plot, anyway: We simply follow the confidence man in his feats of trickery and skulduggery aboard the aptly-named Fidèle during which he poses, among other things, as a herb-doctor, a crippled former slave, a down-on-his-luck man looking for his daughter, a representative of the Black Rapids Coal Company, or, most impressively, a gaudily-clad cosmopolitan by the name of Frank Goodman, inveigling his fellow-passengers into lengthy and often quirky conversations, telling stories or listening to them and expounding his philosophy of the necessity of trust among men. Nevertheless, like in Katherine Anne Porter Ship of Fools, the Fidèle and her passengers are more like a micrososmic mirror of contemporary society, although there is by far less bitterness and spite in Melville’s inventory-taking of the human condition, be it ever so pessimistic at bottom. The confidence man’s fellow passengers run the whole gamut of humanity – with the exception of its fairer half – including frontiersmen, capitalists, scholars, misers, religious men and quite probably there is also another confidence man aboard. They are all ready to take up the most recondite references to literature and philosophy, and so the reader will be allowed to listen to conversations on the metaphysics of Indian-hating, the question whether Polonius’s advice to his son was based on meanness or decency, or the argument as to whether a friend should lend money to a friend in need. Everyone here has kissed the blarney stone, repeatedly so, as it seems, and just loves to talk and to tell stories, and while, at first, you wonder what the general premise of the novel is, you will soon find out that it is about confidence and charity. You may wonder why most passengers, even those who seem to be disciples of Distrust, eventually are led up the garden path by the confidence man, whose protestations as to the necessity of confidence should be a warning to any half clear-sighted man – I mean, who is more to be distrusted than the man who tells you that you may readily confide in him? But then, you may ask yourself the question whether the whole machinery of capitalism is not actually based on confidence, if not in particular individuals, but in the system as such and in its capacity to work. Unless we believe in the potential of the paper slips we call money to be exchanged for goods and services, society will soon fall apart, and this is where the confidence man, he of the cloven foot, has his point.

But even the narrator himself, as far as Melville playfully seems to point out, has a problem with confiding in his reader’s readiness to follow him up the garden path, because there are three times when the narrator makes some general remarks upon the art of weaving a yarn, suspecting that the reader might argue that his characters are not all of a piece or that certain events of his story are unrealistic, and even here, he finally argues like the confidence man, saying that

”[i]t is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.”

And if there is one writer I feel trust in – in fact, there are quite some of them – it is Melville, whose insight into human nature has not, like in Porter’s case, brought him to abhor and to look down upon it, but to take it for what it is and to respect its ambivalence, seeing that even its foibles may eventually lead to some good sometimes. Of course, as with The Confidence Man, man’s end remains in the dark and allows the hope that

”[s]omething further will follow of this Masquerade.”

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

All'apparenza commedia ma tragedia nella sostanza, questo ultimo libro pubblicato in vita da Melville è un gioiello.
Il confidence-man del titolo non fatica affatto a carpire la fiducia dei suoi compagni di viaggio per poi imbrogliarli o coinvolgerli in loschi affari perché questi ultimi non sono solamente ingenui, ma peggio, sono arrendevoli, vinti, stanchi e (probabilmente) hanno essi stessi un lato maligno. È un romanzo pessimista, una storia che non termina ma si ripropone all'infinito sempre identica a se stessa seppur diversa negli abiti.
Melville non è uno scrittore semplice, ma leggerlo dà una soddisfazione enorme.

[Jacob]

Moby-Dickheads, take note: y'ain't seen nuthin' yet.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scurrilous retaliation against everything Melville perceived as keeping him--intellectually, emotionally, financially--down. It is a rogues gallery of cat-ate-the-canary grins. Peddlers of miraculous elixirs, promulgators of theosophical mummery, hardworkin' good ol' boys haplessly fallen on hard times, hucksters, shysters, charlatans, every sort of silver-tongued slyboots aiming to perform the world's oldest magic trick: to make that dollar bill climb up out of your wallet and disappear and reappear inside his pocket. Overall, a tangled glob of bitter spleen that Melville surely needed to cough up but whose tonic properties are a bit diluted by its own repetitions and the dumb passage of time.
-----------------
*Unrelated, but interesting to me: this is the first time I have encountered marginal notes in a book proving that I had definitely read it before, yet I had--and still have--absolutely no memory of it... Quite unnerving. What else has oblivion claimed?!

[Carly Mae · Rating 2 out of 5]

reading this was like having nasty cough syrup

[Stefania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα βαθιά φιλοσοφικό έργο όπως όλα τα μυθιστορήματα του Μέλβιλ. Η πλοκή λιγοστή αλλά εδώ η ιστορία εξυπηρετεί τις φιλοσοφικές ανησυχίες του συγγραφέα σχετικά με τη αντιφατική φύση του ανθρώπου. Όλοι έχουμε υπάρξει λίγο ή πολύ απατεώνες και περισσότερο απέναντι στον εαυτό μας, χωρίς την τεχνική της εξαπάτησης πόσο αφόρητη θα ήταν η ζωή μας.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Melville's most modern, even post-modern, work of fiction. An amazing tale that I read for our Lincoln Park Thursday Night book group. The title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the passengers, whose varied reactions constitute the bulk of the text. Each person including the reader is forced to confront that in which he places his trust. The Confidence-Man uses the Mississippi River as a metaphor for those broader aspects of American and human identity that unify the otherwise disparate characters. Melville also employs the river's fluidity as a reflection and backdrop of the shifting identities of his "confidence man."
The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many critics have placed The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and "Bartleby the Scrivener" as a precursor to 20th-century literary preoccupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. Melville's choice to set the novel on April Fool's Day underlines the work's satirical nature and potentially reflects Melville's worldview, once expressed in a letter to his friend Samuel Savage: "It is—or seems to be—a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it."
The work includes several satires of 19th century literary figures: Mark Winsome is based on Ralph Waldo Emerson while his "practical disciple" Egbert is Henry David Thoreau; Charlie Noble is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne; Edgar Allan Poe inspired a beggar in the story.

[Vince Will Iam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The most difficult read I've ever had... Melville satirizes 19th-century American society and philosophizes on all sorts of themes cramming the book with biblical and mythological references. He explicitly intended his characters to be inconsistent to puzzle the reader... Done! Yet Moby Dick is in my all-time favourites but the Con-Man is much too fastidious to be simply enjoyable. However, it may constitute a great book to study literature if you are brave enough to spend hours deciphering its rich imagery and double-meanings. However wise our eminent Melville was, that journey on the Mississippi river kept me all at sea. 2.5 but let's say 3 stars (for the brilliant metafictional chapters)