The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

   My, oh my, and dear me! Where do I begin with such a book? I needed a book to add to update my Melville Index Page for 2019, but some descriptions of this one were downright scary, such as, in one case, the person stating that it was the most difficult novel he had ever read. Yikes! I have this stereotype of Melville that his books are difficult, but as I looked back on the ones I have reviewed, really, it was only Moby Dick that was the grueling nightmare. That, for me was the most difficult, so, I thought, if this one is worse, can my nerves of steel endure it?
   It actually is available in free eBook form at Project Gutenberg, and I had that downloaded and on my tablet, but I thought, I will probably have to end up charging my device 150 times as I struggle through. So I bought it in book form at Dover with my $50-off coupon, (yes, that's five-zero!).
   However, the more I read about this novel, the more it intrigued me, because it is about a con-man who goes from one character to another, and whose lies become his truth. And even worse, he is able to bamboozle others into his "confidence." Hmm. Sound like someone we know today? Who is in the news daily? Who lives in the White House? The blurb on the back cover of the Dover edition says:

On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities—a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman—to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human identity even as his impudent hoaxes form a meditation on illusion and trust.
This comic allegory addresses themes of sincerity, character, and morality in its challenge to the optimism and materialism of mid-19th-century America. By the time of its publication, readers had pigeonholed Herman Melville as a writer of adventure yarns. The novel was completely misunderstood by the author's contemporaries, and its financial failure drove him away from fiction. With the passage of time, however, The Confidence-Man has come to be recognized for its stunningly modern techniques and its indictment of the dark side of the American dream.

   That pretty much convinced me that not only would I like it, but I would "get it." Ferreting out fakery and phoniness is my specialty. Was my hunch correct? Pretty much. I did like it, although, as in Moby Dick, some of the reading was tedious, and for the same reason, that being that Melville crammed too much information into one novel. However, in Moby Dick, the information spurred me on to research more about whales, and I ended up doing a whole Index Page on them. In addition, Melville's works tend to be filled with archaic words and phrases that no doubt would have been better understood in his time. Maybe. I find myself often saying, "now what the hell does that mean?", and they are words that are not always in a dictionary. Plus the fact that this particular novel is mostly dialogue, which I often find challenging, preferring novels that contain lots of physical descriptions. That is why Henry James is not one of my favorite authors, even though I realize he is one of the historical greats. In his case, his conversations are often trite, at least that is how I interpret them—every day conversation that isn't always interesting, although I understand he is creating an atmosphere with them. Plus the fact that some of his sentences take up a whole paragraph, with twists and turns that require one to break it down and re-read again and again, which also holds true in some cases in Melville.
   In this book, however, the "Confidence-Man" has an immense world-knowledge, much more than I, and he converses on subjects that are Greek to me and in some cases they actually are Greek. However, I am toying with the idea that I might keep this book handy and read maybe a chapter a day, and most are very short, with the intent to ponder every little detail and do research along with it. In Melville's time, even then this book was dismissed as a failure, and Melville proclaimed crazy, and he was not a financially successful author in his day at all. However, the book has reached full maturity, and people are now looking back, and seeing the present in a different light. Hindsight is 20/20, you know. When perhaps someday soon, people will clearly understand Melville's intentions, and a coherent interpretation becomes available, I surmise that this novel will be declared the work of a genius, rather than a crazy man. And so, yes, I liked the book, I found it nowhere near as challenging as Moby Dick, but though I understand the very basic theme and purpose Melville had in mind when he wrote it, it is a work that contains layers upon layers upon layers of hidden meanings, hidden truths, and some very funny satire. I am not alone in my conclusion. I read quite a number of other people's opinions, and, well, no one really knows what it is about. So there.
   At one point when I was still toying with the idea of reading this book, I read an article by Chris Hedges entitled Trump, the Quintessential American that tied him to Melville's character and P.T. Barnum, further inspiring my interest in this novel. I also found that Barnum's name was often connected to Melville's character. Wikipedia's article convinced me there was a tie. They say:

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810-April 7, 1891) was an American showman, politician, and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum and Bailey Circus (1871-2017). He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, though he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession . . . and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me". According to his critics, his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers." He is widely credited with coining the adage, "There's a sucker born every minute," although no proof can be found of him saying this.

But certainly that was the philosophy of the Confidence-Man. In addition, Wikipedia mentions that Barnum was a philanthropist and certainly a humanitarian and abolitionist, even while he made a living swindling people, or at least hoaxing them. Wikipedia says:

He embarked on an entertainment career, first with a variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", and soon after by purchasing Scudder's American Museum which he renamed after himself. He used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Fiji mermaid and General Tom Thumb. In 1850, he promoted the American tour of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, paying her an unprecedented $1,000 a night for 150 nights. He suffered economic reversals in the 1850s due to bad investments, as well as years of litigation and public humiliation, but he used a lecture tour as a temperance speaker to emerge from debt. His museum added America's first aquarium and expanded the wax-figure department.

   While this novel contains some biographical elements of Barnum, it is more of an exposé of America at the time, drunken with the get-rich-quick ideal—selfish capitalism surrounded by abject poverty. It is not only all here in this story, but it is played by the same character in his many guises, along with others with whom he interacts—a portrait of the American Spirit of the 1850s.
   I took pages of notes and have volumes of additional information on this work, so perhaps the best way to approach the rest of this review is by supplying a brief synopsis of the story, followed by quotes and links from outside sources. Written in 1857 and published on April Fool's Day of that year, it is about a Mississippi River steamboat, appropriately named Fidèle (meaning "a believer") travelling down to New Orleans. Wikipedia compares it to the medieval classic, Canterbury Tales—a wide range of personalities whose stories connect. In the midst of it all is the con-man, the Con-fidence Man, who flows like the river between them, sometimes in the form of a beggar, and other times in the form of a wealthy gentleman, but always telling lies, lies, lies, and always bemoaning the fact that there is so little " confidence" (trust) in mankind. He goes through endless tales and scripts to convince those around him to have "confidence" in him, then turns around and swindles them. Because the steamboat makes frequent stops along the river, it is easy to change characters and costumes, since people disembark and new ones board at each stop. Incidentally, Dover describes him as a grifter, and I had to look that one up. It was not in my small (1,095-page) newer dictionary, so I consulted my old Webster's, and it refers to someone who obtains money illegally. The word "confidence" also has a double meaning, and a confidence-man is one who defrauds people by means of a confidence game, by earning their trust. So, just clarifying that, shines a light on the story's theme.
   However, I found the Wikipedia article mostly deceiving, because in its listing of characters, it implies that they are different people. Perhaps that is their interpretation, but it is certainly wrong. Melville himself, in the book's title, "His Masquerade" tells us that this one man wears many costumes. I believe he boards as the Mute in cream colors, who writes on a slate phrases loosely quoted from 1 Corinthians 13, substituting the word "charity" for love. But after that, I am quite certain of his other guises, because, though they are vastly different, his conversation always head to the same goal, that being confidence (trust). His first guise is as the crippled "Negro" called Guinea, whom the man with the wooden leg calls a fraud. Guinea, to prove himself truthful, gives a listing of those on board who supposedly know him and can answer for him, described by the clothing they wear or some other unique trait, such as one being an herb doctor. Melville carefully yet often subtly describes the clothing or appearance of each of the con-man's personalities, making it easy, or easier to keep track of him. Because Guinea has really given a list of all the different masquerades he will be playing on this trip down the river, and obviously he is only disguised as a "Negro." They are all the same man! And one of them supposedly helps Guinea off the boat to make it sound all the more credible! Of course, it is all lies, lies, and more lies, a regular Trump this guy is.
   One of the men who has given a coin to Guinea accidentally drops a business card, unaware. "Guinea" picks it up, and in his next personality, he now approaches that same man as if they had been close friends. The man cannot remember, but the con-man convinces him he has lost a portion of his memory. And he falls for it!! He says he is also a member of the Masons, so he cannot turn down the con-man in his request for money. In return, the con-man tells him of a certain transfer agent on board from whom he may purchase a valuable stock in the Black Rapids Coal Company. Not surprisingly, he later appears as that personality, and makes an easy sale. So, you see how this man works? One personality sets up the next one for success. But it doesn't always work, and there are always those who cry fraud. And the story advances, however, we clearly see that the con-con is not the only liar, phony, and swindler. Kinda like in Washington. And it gets very complicated, as there is often a swirl of characters interacting, flitting in and out of the limelight. So, that is a brief synopsis, at least how I have interpreted the novel, and I don't claim to have it right!
   I will now go on with some other people's comments. There is a very short and informative article at JSTOR, (which is a digital library for scholars, researchers and students). This article also links to an informative interview, and points out, that the case of a New York swindler named Samuel Thompson or Thomas Williams was probably the first on which the term "confidence-man" was used. The article states:

Samuel Thompson, a.k.a. Thomas Williams, was called the "Confidence Man" because he asked for strangers' confidence. His gambit was to engage strangers in conversation, often pretending a prior acquaintanceship. He asked his marks: "do you have confidence in me?" If the answer was yes, he would say "just lend your watch until tomorrow." Just days after Thompson's arrest, the Herald had a "mock-serious" editorial castigating him for his penny-ante watch stealing. He should have gone for the big time, and been a stock-broker: "the 'Confidence Man' of Wall Street" who "battens and fattens on the plunder coming from the poor man and the man of moderate means!"

The next on is about P.T. Barnum, with mention to Melville's character, and illustrates the sort of man Melville had in mind. Here is a quote from a Lapham's Quarterly article called Hatching Monsters. Though he was known as a philanthropist, he seems to have had little regard for people except for his own benefit.

Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, on July 5, 1810, later claiming that he was happy to have missed being a Fourth of July baby: the noise and tumult would have frightened him. By nature something of a coward with "a propensity for keeping out of harm's way," he also detested physical labor. "I never really liked to work," he admits. An unapologetic impresario who studied human nature in order to profit from it, he was an indifferent observer of landscapes. His autobiography contains virtually no descriptions of the forests, fields, and animal life surrounding him in the early 1800s. Along with being the anti-Whitman, he is also the anti-Thoreau. Nor do his recollections include any scenes of warm friendship, trust, or kindness—emotions he would have regarded as sentimental. Nobility as an attribute of character is entirely missing by virtue of its negligible practical value. The Life of P.T. Barnum is one of those curious historical artifacts: the sociopathic memoir. Like Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, or Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Barnum's memoir consists largely of anecdotes about tricks played upon an individual or the public at large by a semihuman shape shifter. As a consequence, Barnum was apolitical. He claimed to prize love, but never represents it in his book. He was beyond all that.

And last of all, I always find interesting comments and wisdom from the good readers at Goodreads. Sandi says:

Melville's confidence-man wears masks designed to reveal the hypocrisies of others. It reads like a series of vignettes, as this con-man drifts from person to person, dressed as a cripple, a stock-broker, a beggar, a cosmopolitan, a charity worker. . . and a few others I forget. Rather than getting much (if any) money from these cons, his aim seems to be to reveal shortcomings in the philosophies of others—getting people to passionately claim that they love to be charitable to their fellow man, and then to flee when asked for alms. Many critics have said that the confidence man is a sort of Devil, and though I can see where this comparison is evoked—there are many contracts drawn up, promises made before all terms are laid out, etc.—I don't see it quite by the end, when he "grows in seriousness." The confidence man seems genuinely torn-up about how man distrusts man, and is bothered when a priest is conned by another trickster. So, perhaps the con-man is done in by his own tricks—the whole narrative he claims to have trust in man, and urges others to do so, but because people show him so readily their disingenuousness, he seems to be verging on a crisis of faith. Perhaps that's another mask, but anyway, it's a twisted little read—more fun, in my opinion, than Moby Dick.

And I agree—it is WAY more fun than Moby Dick! But I am not sure I agree about the seriousness. At the end, he convinces the barber who shaves him to remove his sign that says, "No Trust." Then walks out without paying!!
Anyways, to end this review, here are more more links tying in Trump and the direction we are going in America to Melville's book which perhaps has become even more of a prophesy than he could have imagined!!

Prescient about the president: which writers can help us read Trump?
Herman Melville's April Fool, The Confidence-Man
A Confidence Man in the White House
How Herman Melville Foresaw the Rise of Donald Trump
What Herman Melville Can Teach Us About the Trump Era

And so, do I recommend this book? Absolutely, but be forewarned, it requires a bit of fortitude, persistence, and determination, along with imagination and a love of satire and hidden meanings. It is like a work of fine art, in which the beholder notices something new each time around. I plan to go around at least once more with this one!