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Title: The Confidence-Man : His Masquerade by Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle ISBN: 0-8101-1968-4 Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House Pub. Date: 04 December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.73 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Melville and his Masques
Comment: Set aboard a Mississippi side-wheel steamer in the 1850s, Melville's novel charts the progress of the American character at a time when the old frontier was giving way, albeit slowly, to a new, urban frontier.
"The Confidence-Man" works at so many different levels that it is no wonder Melville's readers weren't quite sure what to make of his ninth novel. It is a call-and-response of idealism suborned for the purposes of sheer humbuggery, material theft and moral sophistry.
I think readers would do well to always keep the word "confidence" in mind as they read the novel; it recurs time and again in different contexts throughout the book. Melville's purpose is to highlight the rift between what things seem to be and what they truly are. It is eerily existential in tone and readers familiar with Kierkegaard and Camus will be delighted by Melville's keen appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.
The wretched reception of "The Confidence-Man" undermined what little was left of Melville's own self-confidence as a writer whose work could support his family. In one sense, this was a grievous shame, because Melville lived for nearly four more decades and, presumably, could have spent that time producing more great literature had his contemporaries simply recognized the intellectual genius of his work.
In another sense, though, "The Confidence-Man" is a fitting send-off to a literary career hobbled by critical inattention and plain bad luck. Melville's America is not an America where dreams come true (note how China Aster is destroyed by his) and where confidence -- optimism -- is rewarded or even warranted. Yet, it is an America recognizably closer to the one we live in than those crafted by Melville's contemporaries -- Emerson, Thoreau, Irving.
"The Confidence-Man" is a very complex novel of ideas. This particular edition is very useful because it provides fairly thorough annotation throughout the book. I would highly recommend it for use in a graduate course on American intellectual history, particularly juxtaposed against Emerson and Tocqueville's analyses of American society and culture.
Rating: 5
Summary: No Confidence?
Comment: 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.
Rating: 1
Summary: Horrible and overrated
Comment: This is like a precurser to the Beat movement of the 1950's. The sentences are overly long, it's written like a police report so you become overly aware that there is a narrator which takes much away from the telling of the story. The characters are not interesting and the story is boring.
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Title: Pierre, Or, the Ambiguities (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville, William C. Spengemann ISBN: 0140434844 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville, John Bryant ISBN: 0140434887 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (The Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the Writings of Herman Melvile) by Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle ISBN: 0810115913 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Moby Dick by Herman Melville ISBN: 0553213113 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1981 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Blithedale Romance (Modern Library Classics) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gretchen Kay Short ISBN: 0375757201 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 14 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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