Overview
"Confidence man" is an Americanism, describing the archetypal ploy of a master-felon arrested in 1849. Punning on the term, Melville created an exuberant allegory on the varieties of American confidence—confidence in the practicality of radical social reforms, the beneficence of Nature, the justness of legal processes, and the efficacy of liberal Christianity. For an April Fool’s joke, the Devil boards a Mississippi steamboat in St. Louis and engages the passengers in dizzying philosophical and theological disquisitions.
This edition draws on the best scholarly attempts to penetrate Melville’s philosophical and aesthetic confidence-tricks.
Annotations to the text identify obscure allusions and expose Melville’s satiric strategies.
A brief history of the text precedes a transcription of Melville’s manuscript draft of "The River."
"Backgrounds and Sources" includes a variety of influences in contemporary life and literature, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to P. T. Barnum—both "confidence men"—to Melville.
A sampling of baffled "reviews" shows how Melville’s elaborate joke exploded in his face.
"Criticism" presents pioneering essays by Egbert S. Oliver, John W. Schroeder, and Elizabeth S. Foster, along with later studies which illuminate various facets of this dark text.
The Bibliography, by Watson G. Branch, is the most fully annotated yet published for any of Melville’s works.
Copyright © 2005, W. W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved.
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