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The Confidence-Man Paperback – February 8, 2012
| Herman Melville (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The Confidence-Man (1857) is a novel by American writer Herman Melville. After the failure of his novels Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852), Melville struggled to find a publisher who would accept his work. When it was published, The Confidence-Man was seen as a flawed, unnecessarily complicated novel, and beyond several collections of poetry, it all but ended Melville's career as a professional writer. When Melville's work was reappraised in the 1920s, however, scholars recognized his status as one of nineteenth century America's finest literary voices. A keen visionary, Melville's satirical outlook and pessimistic sense of American morality drive the fragmented narrative of The Confidence-Man, his final, most complicated, and perhaps most rewarding novel.
In St. Louis, a mute man dressed in cream colored clothes boards a riverboat bound for New Orleans. On the journey down the Mississippi, a cast of characters at once bizarre and commonplace passes the time playing cards, engaging in conversation, and attempting to gain one another's trust. A crippled African American beggar faces disbelief when he speaks of his life on the streets. A young and naïve student idolizes wealthy men and hopes to make a fortune by investing in stocks. A man in a gray suit asks his fellow passengers to donate to a suspicious charity. As the boat sails on, it becomes increasingly clear that while confidence is easily purchased, honesty remains the rarest of commodities. Set and published on April Fool's Day, The Confidence-Man is a satire of American life that explores with unsparing pessimism themes of religion, identity, morality, and the role of money in everyday life.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
- Print length324 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Brown
- Publication dateFebruary 8, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 0.73 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101613822359
- ISBN-13978-1613822357
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From the Back Cover
A mysterious drifter boards a steamboat bound for New Orleans. As they travel down the Mississippi River, the passengers aboard the Fidèle pass the time by telling stories, playing cards, and making conversation as suspicion grows and trust becomes no more than a commodity. The Confidence-Man is Herman Melville's final novel.
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Brown (February 8, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 324 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1613822359
- ISBN-13 : 978-1613822357
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.73 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,897,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21,356 in Fiction Satire
- #88,841 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #179,215 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

The writing career of Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) peaked early, with his early novels, such as Typee becoming best sellers. By the mid-1850s his poularity declined sharply, and by the time he died he had been largely forgotten. Yet in time his novel Moby Dick came to be regarded as one of the finest works of American, and indeed world, literature, as was Billy Budd, which was not published until long after his death, in 1924.
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It begins with an April day, the first, "April Fool's Day" on a paddle-wheeled river boat heading downstream from St. Louis, Missouri to New Orleans, Louisiana. The river is wide, 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) at certain points, but a river boat is generally thought to be a reassuring form of travel.
This is not the case, not once in the 45 chapters which follow. The concentration of psychological violence is so intense that the reader is unaware of its insidious presence which manifests itself continually in its different disguises.
In Chapter 14, in a brief aside, Melville gives the reader a kind of passepartout to his novel, when he describes the first stuffed platypus from Australia, the so-called "duck-billed beaver", which many naturalists refused to recognize as a separate species and preferred to conclude that the bill had been ably glued on.
In a letter to his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1851, Melville writes: "Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister."
Obviously for many this is a totally unacceptable view of the human race. Incomprehension and
denial are natural defensive reactions. But considering that 153 years have passed since the
publication of "The Confidence Man" and considering the accumulated evidence we have at hand, this prophetic novel provides the ONLY credible conclusive appraisal of the human condition.
The particular edition that I read seemed to be a re-print of an earlier edition. There is a too-brief introduction to the author and the book. Likewise, there are no notes to help with some of the expressions common in the 19th century but since fallen into disuse in the 21st. For example, when one of the confidence men refers to his "father's friend, James Hall, the judge", I wondered if Melville was referring to his own father-in-law, who was a judge. Hall, it turns out, was a writer whose 1835 book "Sketches..." was one of Melville's sources.
A good "companion" to The Confidence Man and other Melville works is The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, edited by R. S. Levine. And readers interested in pursuing the author in more depth will find fascinating reading in Leviathan, A Journal of Melville Studies.
It would seem that not much has changed in the 150 years since this novel was written. Maybe it has always been this way...










