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A scathing, razor-sharp satire set on a New Orleans-bound riverboat, The Confidence-Man exposes the fraudulent optimism of so many American idols and idealists--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and P.T. Barnum, in particular--and draws a dark vision of a country being swallowed by its illusions of progress. It begins with a mute boarding a Mississippi boat and ends without a conclusion: "Something further may follow of this Masquerade." In between, the "confidence man," so well disguised as to avoid clear identification even by the reader, meets and tricks a boatful of unusual characters.
The culmination of Herman Melville`s brilliant career as a novelist, and the introduction of a particularly American brand of satire that is as caustic as it is funny, The Confidence-Man creates an elaborate and beautiful masquerade that asks: who in this world is worth our confidence?
Why is Dalkey Archive doing yet-another edition of The Confidence-Man? And why is it doing Melville at all? First, this edition, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill over forty years ago, contains remarkable annotations by H. Bruce Franklin, intended for both the general reader and the scholar. It`s an edition we have long admired. More importantly, we believe that The Confidence-Man is America`s first "postmodern" novel--game-like, darkly comic, and completely inventive.ISBN - 9781564784544
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Pages : 355
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