The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Front Cover
The Floating Press, Nov 1, 2010 - Fiction - 458 pages
The name Herman Melville is synonymous with the pinnacle of American literary achievement, and many regard his novel Moby-Dick as the quintessential work of American fiction. In The Confidence-Man, Melville's final major novel, the author explores the motivations, travails, and personalities of a group of boat passengers en route to New Orleans, as well as the mysterious trickster figure who riles things up at the margins of the group.
 

Contents

Chapter XXIV A Philanthropist Undertakes to Convert a Misanthrope but Does Not Get Beyond Confuting Him
245
Chapter XXV The Cosmopolitan Makes an Acquaintance
260
Chapter XXVI Containing the Metaphysics of IndianHating According to the Views of One Evidently Not so Prepossessed as Rouss
268
Chapter XXVII Some Account of a Man of Questionable Morality but Who Nevertheless Would Seem Entitled to the Esteem of that
281
Chapter XXVIII Moot Points Touching the Late Colonel John Moredock
288
Chapter XXIX The Boon Companions
295
Chapter XXX Opening with a Poetical Eulogy of the Press and Continuing with Talk Inspired by the Same
308
Chapter XXXI A Metamorphosis More Surprising than Any in Ovid
330

Chapter IX Two Business Men Transact a Little Business
86
Chapter X In the Cabin
97
Chapter XI Only a Page or So
107
Chapter XII Story of the Unfortunate Man from Which May Be Gathered Whether or No He Has Been Justly so Entitled
110
Chapter XIII The Man with the TravelingCap Evinces Much Humanity and in a Way Which Would Seem to Show Him to Be One of the
116
Chapter XIV Worth the Consideration of Those to Whom it May Prove Worth Considering
125
Chapter XV An Old Miser Upon Suitable Representations is Prevailed Upon to Venture an Investment
130
Chapter XVI A Sick Man After Some Impatience is Induced to Become a Patient
140
Chapter XVII Towards the End of Which the HerbDoctor Proves Himself a Forgiver of Injuries
154
Chapter XVIII Inquest into the True Character of the HerbDoctor
164
Chapter XIX A Soldier of Fortune
171
Chapter XX Reappearance of One Who May Be Remembered
187
Chapter XXI A Hard Case
198
Chapter XXII In the Polite Spirit of the Tusculan Disputations
213
Chapter XXIII In Which the Powerful Effect of Natural Scenery is Evinced in the Case of the Missourian Who in View of the Re
242
Chapter XXXII Showing that the Age of Magic and Magicians is Not Yet Over
332
Chapter XXXIII Which May Pass for Whatever it May Prove to Be Worth
335
Chapter XXXIV In Which the Cosmopolitan Tells the Story of the Gentleman Madman
338
Chapter XXXV In Which the Cosmopolitan Strikingly Evinces the Artlessness of His Nature
342
Chapter XXXVI In Which the Cosmopolitan is Accosted by a Mystic Whereupon Ensues Pretty Much Such Talk as Might Be Expected
344
Chapter XXXVII The Mystical Master Introduces the Practical Disciple
359
Chapter XXXVIII The Disciple Unbends and Consents to Act a Social Part
363
Chapter XXXIX The Hypothetical Friends
366
Chapter XL In Which the Story of China Aster is at SecondHand Told by One Who While Not Disapproving the Moral Disclaims th
378
Chapter XLI Ending with a Rupture of the Hypothesis
400
Chapter XLII Upon the Heel of the Last Scene the Cosmopolitan Enters the Barbers Shop a Benediction on His Lips
406
Chapter XLIII Very Charming
416
Chapter XLIV In Which the Last Three Words of the Last Chapter Are Made the Text of Discourse Which Will Be Sure of Receiving
430
Chapter XLV The Cosmopolitan Increases in Seriousness
434
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About the author (2010)

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was born into a seemingly secure, prosperous world, a descendant of prominent Dutch and English families long established in New York State. That security vanished when first, the family business failed, and then, two years later, in young Melville's thirteenth year, his father died. Without enough money to gain the formal education that professions required, Melville was thrown on his own resources and in 1841 sailed off on a whaling ship bound for the South Seas. His experiences at sea during the next four years were to form in part the basis of his best fiction. Melville's first two books, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), were partly romance and partly autobiographical travel books set in the South Seas. Both were popular successes, particularly Typee, which included a stay among cannibals and a romance with a South Sea maiden. During the next several years, Melville published three more romances that drew upon his experiences at sea: Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both fairly realistic accounts of the sailor's life and depicting the loss of innocence of central characters; and Mardi (1849), which, like the other two books, began as a romance of adventure but turned into an allegorical critique of contemporary American civilization. Moby Dick (1851) also began as an adventure story, based on Melville's experiences aboard the whaling ship. However, in the writing of it inspired in part by conversations with his friend and neighbor Hawthorne and partly by his own irrepressible imagination and reading of Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists Melville turned the book into something so strange that, when it appeared in print, many of his readers and critics were dumbfounded, even outraged. By the mid-1850s, Melville's literary reputation was all but destroyed, and he was obliged to live the rest of his life taking whatever jobs he could find and borrowing money from relatives, who fortunately were always in a position to help him. He continued to write, however, and published some marvelous short fiction pieces Benito Cereno" (1855) and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) are the best. He also published several volumes of poetry, the most important of which was Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), poems of occasionally great power that were written in response to the moral challenge of the Civil War. His posthumously published work, Billy Budd (1924), on which he worked up until the time of his death, became Melville's last significant literary work, a brilliant short novel that movingly describes a young sailor's imprisonment and death. Melville's reputation, however, rests most solidly on his great epic romance, Moby Dick. It is a difficult as well as a brilliant book, and many critics have offered interpretations of its complicated ambiguous symbolism. Darrel Abel briefly summed up Moby Dick as "the story of an attempt to search the unsearchable ways of God," although the book has historical, political, and moral implications as well. Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of September 28, 1891, at age 72. The doctor listed "cardiac dilation" on the death certificate. He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York, along with his wife, Elizabeth Shaw Melville.

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