The Confidence Man

by
Herman Melville

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The Confidence Man

by Herman Melville

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 1,072 ratings · 105 reviews

Herman Melville's The Confindence-Man: His Masquerade was the tenth, last, and most perplexing book of his decade as a professional man of letters. After it he gave up his ambitious effort to write works that would be both popular and profound and turned to poetry. The book was published on April 1--the very day of its title character's April Fools' Day masquerade on a Mis...more

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Published December 1st 1964 by Plume (first published 1857)

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Oct 19, 2012 Eddie Watkins rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more 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.(less)

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Jun 18, 2009 matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: america-f-k-yeah, fictions-of-the-big-it, satire, social-crit, underrated

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 grievan...more

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. (less)

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Jan 08, 2013 Mark Stephenson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Here is a 1966 paper which I don't think is available online relevant to "a Green Prophet from Utah" (Confidence Man Chapter 2)

MELVILLE'S ALMA AND THE BOOK OF MORMON

ROBERT A. REES

In letters to three different people, not long after Mardi had been published, Melville spoke of what he felt was its latent excellence. To his father-in-law Judge Lemuel Shaw, he wrote, “Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will solve 'Mardi'.”1 In a letter to Richard Bentley, 5 June 1849, Melville assured him, “...more

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Dec 18, 2007 Will Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think we're still catching up to this novel - or whatever it is. An uncompromising search into problems of truth, deception, race, failures of language, regional identity - you name it. May aggravate the casual reader.

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Jun 18, 2010 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, lincoln-park-group

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 u...more 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.(less)

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Mar 20, 2008 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: black-comedy

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...more

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Nov 03, 2008 Yarb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A post-modern masterpiece; a century ahead of its time. Aboard a Mississippi steamboat you can see a pubescent America in the confidence, and lack of it, asked of and offered by the various hucksters, pamphleteers and visionaries. And the novel itself tests the confidence of the reader as each character slides away beneath the muddy prose waters of the river: should I trust him? Will he come back to bite me? Is this the same person who...? And all the while Melville baits his tortuous sentences...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Matthewaqq rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters; heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all these hunters.
Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern speculators a...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The word "con," of course, is derived from the word "confidence." To swindle a person, one must gain his confidence, then deceive him.

Characters and readers are kept off balance in "The Confidence-Man" (1857), after which Herman Melville turned his back on the novel form forever. The book begins as a parade of knaves and suckers move on and off stage on a Mississippi steamboat trip begun on April Fool's Day. There are trusting fools and unscrupulous con men aplenty here, and we often don't know...more The word "con," of course, is derived from the word "confidence." To swindle a person, one must gain his confidence, then deceive him.

Characters and readers are kept off balance in "The Confidence-Man" (1857), after which Herman Melville turned his back on the novel form forever. The book begins as a parade of knaves and suckers move on and off stage on a Mississippi steamboat trip begun on April Fool's Day. There are trusting fools and unscrupulous con men aplenty here, and we often don't know which is which or who exactly are the people whose natures we feel sure of. In many ways, these 45 chapters reveal a series of encounters between charlatans and their victims; sometimes the chapters appear as self-contained scenes of dialogue among people without names (referred to as the stranger, the other, the Cosmopolitan, the herb-doctor); sometimes chapters lead into each other and scenes continue. It's obvious to the reader that many of these con men who appear are in league with each other — many victims seem to be set up for the coming sting by others — but it's also possible that many (all?) of these charlatans are the same person in many disguises. It's part of Melville's sleight of hand that he lets readers try to figure it out.

In the first half, the novel's plot doesn't really move forward; it's just scene after scene of interesting encounters with sharp dialogue as the con men's marks sometimes give up their money (confidence), sometimes escape. In the second half — well, there still really isn't a forward-moving plot to speak of, but Melville does narrow his focus to "the Cosmopolitan" Frank Goodman (a name!), a man who (apparently) wants to see the good in people and quizzes/debates new "friends" about confidence, the nature of man, good and evil. Goodman appears to be in earnest, but again, Melville doesn't let us be sure. At one point, Goodman asks a friend for a hundred dollars; the friend reacts with horror. Goodman puts it off as a hypothetical test, and the friend casts his reaction as playing along with the joke. Much of the rest of the book consists of Goodman's conversations with that friend and, after the friend's departure, discussions with a man who warns him that that friend is a con man, and the novel's longest scenes with that newcomer's protege.

There's no real conclusion in sight, but that's part of Melville's shell game that examines the nature of man and of confidences. The words of a character in "The Confidence-Man" could sum up Melville's approach: "What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to determine the triangle."

"The Confidence-Man" is a satisfying novel. To not get to a conclusive plot point nor specifically tell the reader how to interpret what is occurring is, well, the point. This structure makes the novel well ahead of its time and easy to admire. Its lack of clarity, though intentional and right, also makes it difficult to love.(less)

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Oct 06, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Meliville Compleatists

Shelves: classics, fiction, literary-fiction, novels

I felt mixed about Moby Dick and Billy Budd, but there were aspects of the writing I admire, and I also read Benito Cereno today and was impressed. So if I'm not a Melville fan, neither am I a detractor, but The Confidence-man had just about every aspect I do hate in the writer (other than the massive digressions) squared. For one, this is Melville at his least subtle. The title is "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade" and it takes place aboard the Steamer Fidele on April Fool's Day. By the third...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Kyle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Melville fans. Satire lovers.

Shelves: library-books, classics-in-2013, countries-of-the-world-challenge

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...more 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. (less)

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Dec 29, 2012 Pete daPixie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 19thc-american

I have allowed myself to go with the flow, from St.Louis down the Mississippi bound for New Orleans. 'The Confidence-Man' (should be titled in the plural) was Melville's final novel, published on April 1st 1857 which is the apparent date on which the riverboat begins it's journey.
Not too long after leaving the Missouri shore, I began to have doubts that I would be able to complete the voyage. Any reader can have little doubt that Melville was a skilled and articulate writer, unfortunately I was...more

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Nov 04, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This, the last of Melville's novels, parallels his masterpiece "Moby-Dick" in many different ways, but perhaps the most striking of these is the manner in which the acts both of writing, reading, and even publishing these works only serve to enrich their symbolisms. Thus, to take "Moby-Dick," Melville must have realized, while writing it, that its appeal would necessarily be limited, not only by its form, but also its content. Melville is having fun with us: "Moby-Dick," in book form, is nearly...more This, the last of Melville's novels, parallels his masterpiece "Moby-Dick" in many different ways, but perhaps the most striking of these is the manner in which the acts both of writing, reading, and even publishing these works only serve to enrich their symbolisms. Thus, to take "Moby-Dick," Melville must have realized, while writing it, that its appeal would necessarily be limited, not only by its form, but also its content. Melville is having fun with us: "Moby-Dick," in book form, is nearly the size of a whale. As with Ahab, the reader must be obsessive beyond fatigue. And for what? It turns out to be, after all, a shaggy whale story. 700 pages to find the whale, and then everyone but the narrator dies. I do believe it's the longest single joke in the English language.

No wonder, then, that my eyebrow was immediately raised by the opening of "The Confidence-Man": "At sunrise on a first of April..." What unfolds is an interwoven series of scenes in which the titular character assumes a variety of guises in order to test the bounds of confidence of his fellow riverboat passengers. What is remarkable, however, is the manner in which Melville's flimflam master challenges the reader's bounds and, furthermore, Melville's own seeming inability (or unwillingness) to define his own bounds. Thus, for example, the language of "The Confidence-Man" is saturated with double negatives. Nothing is ever "available," it is "not unavailable." Nothing is ever "certain," it is always "not uncertain." Even the book's publication date, April 1st, 1857, becomes an element of the satire, a satire from which Melville does not except himself. More than any other work I've read, "The Confidence-Man" stands in support of my contention that Herman Melville was primarily a humorist.

It is also worth noting that the title character does not always make material success his direct object. Although he remains tenacious in a number of cases, in others he seems perfectly content to do no more than plant the seeds of discontent in otherwise reasonably-ordered minds. It is as if the ethos of deception is primary over the success of any individual act of deception. That this crookedness, thus, takes on a quasi-religious flavor (supplemented by numerous allusions throughout the text), creates in the mind of the reader a conviction that Melville's "Cosmopolitan" is something not quite human. And yet, nowhere does Melville offer proof one way or the other. April Fool's!

Allow me to be perfectly clear: This is a book that requires considerable patience. It is dense. But for those of us who enjoy such a challenge, the rewards will more than justify the effort.(less)

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Feb 18, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

Stunning. Melville's about 100 years ahead of the curve here. Or maybe he's ahead of us still. No wonder no one knew what to make of this book in 1857. It's funny, but also rather nightmarish. Hard to call it exactly a novel. More like a bunch of Platonic dialogues that also satirize various American figures and ideas. Some of what makes it so dark is how clearly Melville has diagnosed the natural endpoint of commerce and credit and the challenge of whom one might be able to trust.

"Have you conf...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Carl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

it took awhile to get used to herman's sentence structure... this book is what the canterbury tales would've been like if mikhail bulgakov had written it. very bleak in world outlook (through prophetic in a way) but also uproariously funny.

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Feb 12, 2012 Mat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Melville’s final work, The Confidence Man, is perhaps also his overlooked masterpiece.
I read Moby Dick many years ago and thought it was okay (it’s a very ‘gothic’ novel) and I’m half way through Typee (his first novel) so I can’t speak for his other novels (some of which are highly spoken such as White-Jacket) but this is one serious book with some very important underlying messages for humankind.

As other reviewers have pointed out, there is no straight clear linear narrative here and the reas...more Melville’s final work, The Confidence Man, is perhaps also his overlooked masterpiece.
I read Moby Dick many years ago and thought it was okay (it’s a very ‘gothic’ novel) and I’m half way through Typee (his first novel) so I can’t speak for his other novels (some of which are highly spoken such as White-Jacket) but this is one serious book with some very important underlying messages for humankind.

As other reviewers have pointed out, there is no straight clear linear narrative here and the reason soon becomes apparent. The plot is of secondary importance as it serves more as the backdrop from which Melville can launch into his great extensive moral essay on man. The moral message is an open condemnation of the Confidence Man (or what we often call these days just ‘conman’) in all his guises and this is the main crux around which the book pivots with tremendous elegance and beauty.

Firstly, a word about the language and style of the novel. I must say that I’m in two minds about mid-nineteenth century English. At times it rolls off the tongue with great beauty and elegance but at other times I found that it has not aged very well for the modern reader – especially the double negatives such as “He was not unmoved”. Yuck, give me a break. I guess there is a particular style for each time in literary history and Melville definitely has carved out his own area of American literary history.

In brief, the story takes place on a riverboat (perhaps a paddle steamer – remember those?) going down the Mississippi River. This is the first book of Melville’s to my mind which does not take place somewhere on the ocean. The author acts as narrator and fills in the details of what occurs when there is no dialogue.

The basic messages in the book are one’s trust or lack of trust in the world and why it is so hard to have confidence in fellow man because of the stakes. And the stakes are = ‘the risk of being conned’. Throughout the story, various people do get conned or are smart enough to sense the trap and adeptly sidestep it. It looks like little has changed since the mid 1850s because there are at least as many conmen around today as there were back then and they come in a myriad different forms: fake doctors/quacks (the ‘herb doctor’ in the book), businessmen (the conman selling fake stock in the book) etc. There are many more which come to mind including the leaders of religious cults who are able to lure in the gullible through their suave appeal. If I had to sum up the one message I came away with after reading this it is that the world is full of conmen so beware. This book also reminded me of a lyric from a Bob Dylan song, “it’s people’s games you have to dodge”.

Our protagonist, the Confidence Man himself, does not go by one singular name but instead Melville faintly sketches out a conman who at times is more likely a shape-shifter. We are only afforded a very vague outline of who the man of the masquerade is – the ‘gray man’, the ‘Cosmopolitan’ etc. And this is done to brilliant effect because he is meant to symbolize the generic conman of society and not one man in particular.

There has been quite a bit of academic discussion and analysis on who these conmen in the book referred to in real life in Melville’s time and I strongly recommend reading the Penguin Version of this classic as without the very informative endnotes, I would have been totally at a loss in parts of the book. This is one of the few books that I would dare to pick up again at some stage and I think this would be a great book to study in an English class at senior high school.

The Confidence Man was not taken seriously in Melville’s time (remember Melville had sadly been written off largely as a ‘has-been’ by the end of his life). It wasn’t until the Melville ‘revival’ in the early to mid- 20th century that people started to realize how important this guy actually was as a writer.

I believe that this book, in the end, will be considered more ‘timeless’ (and therefore of greater importance) than Moby Dick. While the later novel is also great, the conman will continue to be a scourge and affliction to society both now and in the future. Therefore, the theme of the novel will always be relevant.

Kerouac believed that this was Melville’s best book and, based on the books I have read so far, I agree with him completely. There are so many themes, motifs and sub-themes. Included within the theme of lack of confidence is the idea of a lack of faith in God and I could feel that perhaps Melville himself was undergoing a serious internal and metaphysical battle – I mean his faith in God was really being put to the test towards the end of his life. This is just I feeling I got from the book and have nothing really concrete to back it up with but if you read the novel, you may get the same feeling.

I have heard some people say that this is one of the first ‘postmodern’ books in the sense that the themes and motifs outweigh the narrative in terms of importance. In any case, I highly recommend this book. It will certainly make you think about the deceptiveness of appearances and of modern society and the slightly halting mid-19th century style may make you pause too when you have to re-read certain sections and try to translate them in your head into more contemporary language but this is a serious work by a serious writer which warrants close attention. Finally, there are quite a few quotes and references to Shakespeare in the book so all those fans of Shakey Willie will also enjoy this work.
(less)

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Apr 20, 2013 Jess rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A lot of this was over my head. But the parts that stuck will stick with me. It's amazing to read a book so old that deals with themes of American life that still stalk us - confidence, exceptionalism, charity, race, prejudice, politics, power, monomania.... all the good stuff Melville likes to dig into here. It's a difficult book: not a casual read. It is almost like a fictionalized dialectic between shape-shifting philosophers. And yet, there is a vein of humanism that reflects Melville's ulti...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Mario Armira rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a joke. I'm serious, please do not come into it (if you ever choose to read it) expecting a solid yarn about a con-man up to trickery (even though that is, in abstract, exactly what this book is). It represents Melville at his best/worst: incredibly dense, frustrating, undefinable, yet utterly rewarding if you can muster the patience.

I foresee multiple read-throughs of this one throughout my life. I hate to rate it, as I don't quite have a solid opinion on it, but I was continually...more

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May 22, 2008 Alex added it · review of another edition

This ties with Clarel as my favorite book by my favorite author.

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Apr 23, 2012 Keith rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

April Fool's Day and the Devil decides to ride a Mississippi River boat under the disguise of a series of diverse confidence men. He does not seem particularly interested in conning material goods from the boat's riders, but instead is focused on revealing the hypocrisy and latent distrust in all men and women.

That is the basic story in this dense, sometimes off-putting book that really has no clear plot or character development. It is a series of sketches and vignettes in which various people t...more

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May 29, 2010 Mike Polizzi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A series of dialogues concerning trust in one's fellow man set on April 1st. A giant play in the dark on what is gained and what is lost when one is fooled. A political cartoon full of premonitions of the Civil War, this was Melville's last published novel. In a slightly different way than Moby Dick, this novel plumbs an invisible line to reveal an ineffable truth. A reader is asked to participate in the con and use all of his or her knowledge or powers of observation to find the true meaning of...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It took me three solid months to read this book. It was worth it but only if you like footnotes and obfuscation and constant references to um, everything. Which I do-ish. I especially enjoyed the 2 chapters parodying Emerson and Thoreau respectively. There's the chaper all about all sorts of boys which adds creedence to the "Melville's gay" theory. I liked the random chapters every once in awhile where Melville talks directly to the reader convincing us (or himself) that though characters in nov...more

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Mar 17, 2010 Emily added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010

Well, my attempts to read realist fiction this month are so far zero for two, although I'm certainly taking in some interesting texts. After the unexpected magical elements of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet , I thought I might go in for some Melville. Nineteenth-century American maritime novels: what could be more straightforward? I didn't realize, though, that The Confidence Man, which was waiting on my to-be-read shelf, is late Melville. Published in 1857, it is in fact sometimes labeled his last "m...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Brendan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This subtle tale follows the steamboat Fidèle and her passengers as they meander down the Mississippi on one April Fool's Day. Traipsing about the ship is one of literature's most sinister and guileful masterminds, a "man" of many faces and names. He prowls about the deck, looking for those whose trust he can exploit -- exploitation which, though of a pecuniary nature in the story, has far more sinister allegorical implications. He culls acolytes of a plethora of popular philosophies prevalent i...more This subtle tale follows the steamboat Fidèle and her passengers as they meander down the Mississippi on one April Fool's Day. Traipsing about the ship is one of literature's most sinister and guileful masterminds, a "man" of many faces and names. He prowls about the deck, looking for those whose trust he can exploit -- exploitation which, though of a pecuniary nature in the story, has far more sinister allegorical implications. He culls acolytes of a plethora of popular philosophies prevalent in 19th-century Christianity, ingeniously binds them to the millstone of Confidence, and throws them into the figurative waters.

Indeed, though his figure is central throughout the story, it is only by dim and oblique hints that we see who the Confidence Man truly is. He (as he did in the desert) quotes Scripture with the deftness of an adder. But his final act is the most frightening of all: after slithering past nearly all of the people he encounters, he concludes that the Church is barren, and he extinguishes that Lamp with which he befuddled so many unfortunates.

Melville's pessimistic view of his fellow Christians is enlightening and unnerving, to say the least, especially when viewed in tandem to modern cries for a return to the morality of the past. His work creates a wonderful environment in which Reformed Christian doctrines like total depravity and Sola Scriptura confute the wily Devil and provide the only safe means by which to live. This book reminded of Luther's famous line, "One little word shall fell him," and the lines from Jeremiah 17 that I would pick to fell the Confidence-Man:

Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit."
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?(less)

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Jan 20, 2011 Brad Harkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's been a while since I've read this, but remember really liking it at the time. It takes place on a boat on the Mississippi (Mark Twain-ish, but darker...as Melville would be). It's about a huckster (a confidence man) duping all the people on this river boat using very inventive means. It is also (as with Melville) a study of the human condition. I think this was his last book and judging by how his life went it's no wonder that it tends toward the darker side of things. Great book though!!!

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Feb 01, 2013 Christy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2013

Could not find this as gripping or revelatory as his other "later" works: Bartleby, Benito Cereno, or Billy Budd, all of which I love. The prose is so tortuous and the conceit so clearly drives what there is of a story that there's little motivation to stay engaged with it once you get the idea. Still, it's always a mistake to underestimate Melville. And I wondered if the all-dialogue form, as well as the huckster theme, might have inspired that other American master of cynicism and despair, Wil...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Gary Patella rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought this was a great work by Melville. Although the title character is on a boat for practically the entire novel, I think that Melville really stepped out of his seafaring comfort zone in this one. He showed that he is more than a one trick pony.

We see a charlatan putting on various disguises and tricking people out of their money. The different scenarios are very amusing. I think it is a good read.

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Sep 30, 2011 Ry Pickard rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i was expecting this to be a story about con men, but it really amounted to a group of nameless people talking about the concept of trust for a few hundred pages, which was exactly as interesting as it sounds like it would be. some of the characters told great stories, but it made me wish that i was reading a story and not a series of speeches. there is some interesting philosophy in here and a lot of astute insight into human nature and the way that people treat each other, but not much in the...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Lynn rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Found this nigh unreadable. The characters are not actually characters, just mouthpieces who give speeches on the theme of trust, i.e. "confidence." More like reading an allegory play than a novel, as there is no apparent story, just a series of statements made by figures who represent different attitudes. They don't even have names, but are identified by descriptions like "the man in gray" or "the affluent-looking man."

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Dec 10, 2012 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the sort of thing I probably would have liked if I had been around in the 19th century. Herman Melville hates all of the dumb theology and philosophy of his contemporaries, so he puts it in the mouths of a series of con-men on a Mississippi steam boat. Just like when Dante sent all of the people he doesn't like to Hell!

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About Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously only a few years later. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for...more

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“Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and devilry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve?” — 4 people liked it

“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’s experience can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it.” — 1 person liked it

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