The Confidence-Man: Large Print

ISBN-10: 1730731880
ISBN-13: 9781730731884
Series: The Confidence-man
Pages: 292
Language: English
Published: 2018-11-05
Publisher: Independently Published
Author: Herman Melville

Description

The Confidence-Man: Large Printby Herman MelvilleLong considered Melville's strangest novel, The Confidence-Man is a comic allegory aimed at the optimism and materialism of mid-nineteenth century America. A shape-shifting Confidence-Man approaches passengers on a Mississippi River steamboat and, winning over his not-quite-innocent victims with his charms, urges each to trust in the cosmos, in nature, and even in human nature-with predictable results. In Melville's time the book was such a failure he abandoned fiction writing for twenty years; only in the twentieth century did critics celebrate its technical virtuosity, wit, comprehensive social vision, and wry scepticism.