The Confidence-Man (Oxford World's Classics)

by Herman Melville (Author), Tony Tanner (Introduction), John Dugdale (Contributor)

130 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0192837622

ISBN-10: 0192837621

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A challenging text....An excellent edition--very useful introduction, appendices, and explanatory notes."--Kenneth D. Pimple, Indiana University

About the Author

Tony Tanner is at King's College, Cambridge.

Product details

Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
Paperback : 416 pages
ISBN-10 : 0192837621
ISBN-13 : 978-0192837622
Product Dimensions : 7.7 x 0.8 x 5 inches
Publisher : Oxford University Press (November 11, 1999)
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: #3,082,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,053 in American Literature (Books)
- #5,353 in American Fiction Anthologies
- #8,772 in Classic American Literature

Customer Reviews:
130 ratings

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3 star		13%
2 star		11%
1 star		14%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Thomas Quale

Melville's Master Class

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2016

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Melville himself is something of an acquired taste and even among those who appreciate him, The Confidence-Man is something of an acid test. A dark carnival set aboard a Mississippi riverboat, Melville gives us no less than a disguise-shifting Satan to point up our human foibles, gullibilities, cruelties, and weaknesses, economic, social and religious. Wandering and episodic, it reads more like a casebook than a novel, but Melville offers up a master class in nuance, irony, infolded and serial contingencies, and nearly straight-faced mischievousness. This may seem a sort of theoretical fun--a sort of philosophical stick-figure puppet show--but it is a remarkable text, just (and this may be the deal-breaker) not very rich in the conventional pleasures of the novel. Doomed from the start, Melville's last novel has been assured, however long it has taken, of a devoted cult following. Count me in.

29 people found this helpful

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James C Noland

Wonderful story for our times

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2019

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Just re-read Herman Meliville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. Swindlers and fast-talkers on a river boat on the Mississippi around 1900. Intricate plot draws the reader in, hoping to avoid being fooled. In the end, we're all fools. Always a favorite, I read again on vacation, amazed by how relevant it is.

9 people found this helpful

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Joe P. Szimhart

an archaic trip down the great river

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2016

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Melville catapulted me into another time through his colorful, descriptive language--I had to look up words used in what is to me an archaic, 19th Century delivery. I may have to read this one twice to better absorb the subtle, at times comical play of con artists hustling money or approval from targets on the boat trip down the Mississippi. Enjoyable.

9 people found this helpful

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Jonathan S. Watson

Absolutely unreadable, full of meandering sentences

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2020

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The plot seemed interesting, and the characters might have become so, but the prose style was almost Henry James. Like hacking out a path thru a jungle - too much work to figure out what the author means.

One person found this helpful

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Alexandra Chace

"The Confidence Man" by Herman Melville

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2010

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After Herman Melville's tales of mountainous waves, disease, apparitions, murders, suicides, cannabalism, tropical storms, tsunamis, hallucinations, lightning strikes, hangings, volcanic eruptions, starvation, giant whales and every form of terror possible on the high seas and land, "The Confidence Man" is Melville's most violent work.

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.

22 people found this helpful

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Junieswilliams

Not Good

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2019

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No good,written for the people of the 1800s Gentel. Not for comman folks.

2 people found this helpful

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Monty Vierra

No Confidence?

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2001

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I take "The Confidence Man" to be a comedy of confused identities and good humor which together help us look at our notions of trust and kindness. A modern example of this level of the story can be found in the film "The Sting". There are other, more subtler things going on in Melville's book that merit more readings, of course, but much of the book can be enjoyed for its seemingly light-hearted look at our willingness to be duped by salesmen and hucksters.
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.

14 people found this helpful

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macocael

Great deal. Arrived pretty quickly too

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018

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Great deal. Arrived pretty quickly too. Thanks!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Tony Barber

A disturbing, subversive masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2017

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Only Melville could have written this strange but magnificent novel, with its extraordinarily allusive language, its biting commentary on mid-19th American society and its wry, unsentimental insights into human nature. Four stars, not five, because the punctuation of the Kindle text is flawed in places.

gaetano

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 22, 2016

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Academically really really interesting. Don't know how many common readers would appreciate it though.

One person found this helpful

Gaby

Not suitable to give as a present

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2017

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Writing this from the point of view that this was intended as a gift but appears to be a print out of the e edition of the book and therefore isn't fit for purpose.

Amazon Customer

An Insight Into Human Nature

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2014

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Reminds me of Cervantes, 'Don Quixote'.

Laurent Richard

Livre plus que ardu à lire et à comprendre, bref, évitez de perdre votre temps à lire cette histoire

Reviewed in France on August 27, 2018

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Un livre déplaisant à lire et bien trop souvent incompréhensible. Cela explique certainement pourquoi cet ouvrage a été un échec cuisant pour l'auteur. À trop complexifier l'histoire et les personnages, tout en ajoutant des références bibliques de façon plus que régulière, on est perdu et l'histoire devient un chemin de croix pour le lecteur, quand il ne se perd pas dans les méandres du jargon ténébreux de Melville.

7 people found this helpful

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