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Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
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Confidence-Man: His Masquerade Paperback - 2007

by Herman Melville; Introduction by H. Bruce Franklin


Summary

Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.

From the publisher

A scathing, razor-sharp satire set on a New Orleans-bound riverboat, The Confidence-Man exposes the fraudulent optimism of so many American idols and idealists--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and P. T. Barnum, in particular--and draws a dark vision of a country being swallowed by its illusions of progress.Why is Dalkey Archive doing yet another edition of The Confidence-Man? And why is it doing Melville at all? First, this edition, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill over forty years ago, contains remarkable annotations by H. Bruce Franklin, intended for both the general reader and the scholar. It's an edition we have long admired. More importantly, we believe that The Confidence-Man is America's first postmodern novel--game-like, darkly comic, and completely inventive.

From the jacket flap

"In "The Confidence-Man," writes John Bryant in his Introduction, "Melville found a way to render our tragic sense of self and society through the comic strategies of the confidence game. He puts the reader in the game to play its parts and to contemplate the inconsistencies of its knaves and fools." Set on a Mississippi steamer on April Fool's Day and populated by a series of shape-shifting con men, "The Confidence-Man is a challenging metaphysical and ethical exploration of antebellum American society. Set from the first American edition of 1857, this Modern Library paperback includes an Appendix with Bryant's innovative "fluid text" analysis of early manuscript fragments from Melville's novel.

Details

  • Title Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
  • Author Herman Melville; Introduction by H. Bruce Franklin
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition International Ed
  • Pages 355
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Dalkey Archive Press, Champaign
  • Date 2007-04-01
  • ISBN 9781564784544 / 1564784541
  • Weight 1.02 lbs (0.46 kg)
  • Dimensions 8 x 5.32 x 1.15 in (20.32 x 13.51 x 2.92 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Mississippi River, Satire
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2006017019
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About the author

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 Melville's fall from favor with the reading public -- was rediscovered in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

by Melville, Herman

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

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The Confidence-Man : His Masquerade

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

by Melville, Herman; H. Bruce Franklin [Editor]; Daniel Handler [Preface];

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

by Melville, Herman; H. Bruce Franklin [Editor]; Daniel Handler [Preface];

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