骗子 (1857)

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, first published in New York on April Fool's Day 1857, is the ninth and final novel by American writer Herman Melville. The work was published on the exact day of the novel's setting. Centered on the title character, The Confidence-Man portrays a group of steamboat passengers travelling on the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The narrative follows a succession of confidence men who, as suggested by the book's title, may be the same man in disguise. The confidence man uses various methods of persuasion to sell patent medicine, encourage speculation in fraudulent business, donate to non-existent charities, and other cons. In the latter part of the narrative, the confidence man discusses friendship and other topics with the other passengers. Interspersed with the dialogues are other texts: essay, short story, ode, and others. These additional texts inspire the reader to consider the difference between fiction and reality.

When the novel was first released, critical reception acknowledged its metaphysical angle, while criticizing its cynical point of view. Many reviewers seem not to have understood that the title hinted that one man was represented in multiple disguises and that the book criticized Christianity. Elizabeth Foster's introduction to the 1954 edition summarized the critical analysis already done and spurred further study of the work. Since then, critics have praised the work for its postmodern sensibilities, like how the confidence man both hides and reveals truth. Literary analysts have described the novel as a satire or allegory, with a possible typological reading of the work. The use of tropes from pantomime suggests that characters are fulfilling stereotyped roles. Melville based some of the characters on real-life people. The inclusion of multiple genres of writing is reminiscent of literary magazines of the day, tapping into journalistic uncertainty about the fiction and non-fiction status of the work. One of Melville's biographers stated that the reason for the many genres in the novel is that Melville lengthened it with previously-rejected works. The novel includes religious themes and shows how an economy that assumes generosity must adapt when characters like the confidence man take advantage of those assumptions. Stories within the novel address racial conflict between Indians and white settlers and illustrate how racist stories are removed from firsthand accounts from Indians.

Historical background

At the time The Confidence-Man was published, the Mississippi River was seen as part of the Western frontier and the fringe of civilization. Drinking and gambling were common on steamboats along the Mississippi, and the frontier was associated with lawlessness and corruption. The 1850s were a time when many United States citizens felt that westward expansion was inevitable, an idea called Manifest Destiny. Individualism and materialism were both popular virtues. Coinciding with the economic growth of the 1850s, economic speculation became one way that many built or lost fortunes. Selling of stock was not well-regulated; it was possible to sell unauthorized shares of stock, or to sell stock in fictitious companies. Making money became a virtue, and the method was often not scrutinized.

Also in the 1850s, magazines portrayed P. T. Barnum's promotion of hoaxes to make money as a similar kind of flimflamming. Early in 1855, there was widespread news coverage of a man who tricked people out of their money in New York by pretending to need an emergency loan. The April account in the Albany Evening Journal, where the confidence man pretends to be an acquaintance of a jewelry store employee, and then draws attention to their shared membership in Freemasonry to gain sympathy for a monetary donation, is very similar to Ringman's con in chapter 4 of the novel. Newspaper accounts emphasized the "new" and "original" methods of the confidence man. The account in the New York Herald recounted how baldly the confidence man asked for his victim's confidence, for example, with the question "Are you really disposed to put any confidence in me?" The characters in Melville's novel similarly ask directly if their interlocutors have confidence in them. The land fraud found in the Black Rapids Coal Company and the herb doctor's miracle cures were both types of fraud common in the mid-19th-century.