The Confidence-man: His Masquerade (World's Classics)

by HermanMelville (Author), TonyTanner (Editor), JohnDugdale (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1989

  $5.55

  Male, female, deft, fraudulent, constantly shifting: which of the `masquerade' of passengers on the Mississippi steamboat Fid `ele is `the confidence man'? The central motif of Melville's last and most `modern' novel can be seen as a symbol of American cultural history. No other edition of this fine novel is available in paperback. This book is intended for the general reader; students of nineteenth-century American literature.

• Used

  Paperback
  1980

  $4.73

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $13.98

  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.