Confidence (noun): con·fi·dence | \\\\ ˈkän-fə-dən(t)s, -ˌden(t)s
Definition of confidence (Entry 1 of 2):
1a: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances
//had perfect confidence in her ability to succeed
//met the risk with brash confidence
b: faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way
//have confidence in a leader
2: the quality or state of being certain : CERTITUDE
//they had every confidence of success
3a: a relation of trust or intimacy
//took his friend into his confidence
b: reliance on another's discretion
//Their story was told in strictest confidence.
c: support especially in a legislative body
//vote of confidence
4: a communication made in confidence : SECRET
//accused him of betraying a confidence
Confidence (adjective):
Definition of confidence (Entry 2 of 2)
: of, relating to, or adept at swindling by false promises
//a confidence game
//a confidence man
(Merriam Webster’s Dictionary)

Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was brought to my attention a few years ago when I was engrossed in Thomas Pynchon’s peculiar postmodern masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow. I discovered that this relatively unknown work of Melville’s had influenced Pynchon. Having a great admiration for Moby Dick and The Piazza Tales, and to a lesser extent Billy Budd, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore. At that time, I was unaware that this work was a significant departure for Melville in both style and content from the adventure stories for which he was renowned. The style had some resemblances to Mark Twain’s, particularly works like The Innocents Abroad, but it was chaotic, filled with digressions, essentially plotless, lacking central characters, and undoubtedly ahead of its time. It’s no wonder that this work, which was criticized as “unreadable” at the time and marked the end of Melville’s professional writing career, would later be reevaluated under the postmodern lens as a great work of genius and would have a powerful influence on writers like Pynchon. Gravity’s Rainbow both awed and frustrated me.

This book was not only about confidence games but also about confidence and trust in a broader sense. How much trust can we place in our fellow travelers? What confidence should we have in the universe and in life itself? In artists like Melville?

The setting of the book is a boat traveling south on the Mississippi towards New Orleans. It is a vessel filled with various characters: possible frauds posing as cripples and begging for charity, medicine men selling supposed cure-all herbs to the sick, false dealers of stocks and bonds, people scamming each other for loans, and many cynics. The work contains stories of deals gone wrong, told from one character to another, along with musings on the cosmic con game that is life, and the author’s reflections on his characters and how they might be seen as insincere by readers and critics. While the characters seem uniquely American, the question of who we can truly trust and what we can truly trust in is raised. How much distrust is healthy? These same questions are repeated as the characters and scenarios change, and by the midway point, the book becomes tiresome and admittedly a struggle to finish.

However, the curious thing was that whenever I put the book down, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I read the second half of the book while traveling not on a boat on the Mississippi but on a train along the Western Coast of the United States. Traveling with my family, I interacted little with the other travelers I didn't know. But I heard stories on the train that reminded me of the discussions in Melville’s narrative. A middle-aged woman shared her recent cancer diagnosis with her much older seatmate and he offered her comfort. A young male from rural California, possibly in high school or college, was on the phone with friends, having run away from home because his parents didn't support his sexual orientation. Lonely people were seeking someone to talk to and someone to listen.

We would leave our luggage to go to the dining car, which required confidence that our fellow travelers wouldn't rummage through it. This was easier at some times than others. A group of felons boarded in Northern California, some high on drugs and others severely unstable, making threats of violence and rummaging through other passengers’ luggage. I had no confidence in them and kept a watchful eye on our luggage and my family as they slept. We ate in the Café Car, and my younger son was sold on the idea that the food he ordered would look like the picture, but he was disappointed to find the bread soggy and the food unappetizing. He learned that advertising and marketing can be con games. We trust what the ads tell us, only to often be disappointed. As time goes on, we become less trustful after being duped too many times.

In a broader sense, I thought about life itself and the necessity of trusting Providence. Not doing so can lead to an excess of anxiety and is a sure path to madness. But it becomes much more difficult to trust in Providence and in life itself when the blows are too great or too numerous.

When I closed the last page of The Confidence-Man, I realized that the book, perhaps because of the circumstances in which I read it, had a much greater impact on me than I had expected while reading. Providence had worked with Melville, and I was persuaded to find more value than I thought possible. All of life is a matter of confidence and trust. This work that initially seemed forgettable had won me over and made me view life in a different light. Perhaps that is the greatest con of all. Herman Melville himself, more than any character traveling the Mississippi, is the titular confidence man.

The saying "to do means to put on" is quite interesting. It's rather satirical, yet very dense. The density of its thoughts made it difficult for me to enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

It seems that this simple phrase holds a deeper meaning that requires careful examination.

Maybe it implies that when we take on a task or responsibility, we are metaphorically "putting on" a certain role or identity.

However, the complexity of this idea makes it a bit of a challenge to fully grasp.

It makes me wonder if there are other hidden meanings within this seemingly straightforward statement.

Overall, while it may be thought-provoking, its density also makes it a bit of a puzzle to解开.

Trust me!

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Unfortunately, there is a classic that I have been struggling to follow and that has never addressed me.

I have been trying hard to understand and engage with this particular classic, but it seems to remain elusive.

Maybe it's because of the language used, which might be a bit archaic or difficult to comprehend.

Or perhaps the themes and concepts presented are so complex that I find myself getting lost along the way.

Despite my efforts, I still feel like I'm not quite getting the full essence of this classic.

It makes me wonder if I'm just not cut out for it or if there's something I'm missing.

I continue to persevere, hoping that one day it will all click and I'll be able to appreciate and understand this classic as it deserves.

But for now, it remains a challenge that I'm determined to overcome.

I had a rather complex feeling towards Moby Dick and Billy Budd. There were certain elements of the writing that I truly admired. Today, I also read Benito Cereno and was quite impressed. So, if I'm not exactly a die-hard Melville fan, I'm also not a complete detractor. However, The Confidence-man seemed to have just about every aspect that I really dislike in the writer (aside from the extensive digressions) magnified.

For starters, this is Melville at his least nuanced. The title, "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade", sets the stage. The story takes place aboard the Steamer Fidele on April Fool's Day. By the third paragraph, we come across a placard mentioning an imposter in the area. And if you haven't grasped by then that the theme is about how confidence and trust factor into the susceptibility to being swindled, don't worry - the characters will drone on and on about this subject in ways that no real people would ever communicate. I've heard this described as more of a Socratic dialogue than a novel. All I can say is that I much prefer Plato.

This book just didn't resonate with me the way some of his other works did. It felt forced and overly didactic, lacking the depth and complexity that I had come to expect from Melville. Maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, but I can't help but feel disappointed with this particular offering.

What is this novel? is it a novel? Is it a collection of vignettes? Is there a plot? Honestly, who knows?

After the critical failure of Moby-Dick, Melville made the decision to write his final novel, The Confidence-Man. I'm not even certain if I'm able to provide a plot summary here. The story is set on a steamboat traveling along the Mississippi River. We sort of leap from one character to another as they each have their own backstories and plots that don't really amount to much.

This book is truly strange. I really have no clue what to make of it. In some parts, it's humorous, while in others, it's completely incomprehensible and impenetrable. Honestly, I can only really compare it to something like Finnegans Wake or other notoriously obtuse novels.

However, I do have a hunch that the problem lies with me. I think I have to admit defeat. I have a feeling that this is a novel I'll have to come back to, perhaps in 40 years' time. So, please, wait for my review.

Melville's work is a scurrilous retaliation against all that he felt was keeping him down, whether intellectually, emotionally, or financially. It presents a rogues gallery filled with cat-ate-the-canary grins. There are peddlers of miraculous elixirs, promulgators of theosophical mummery, hardworking good ol' boys who have haplessly fallen on hard times, hucksters, shysters, charlatans, and every sort of silver-tongued slyboots. Their aim is to perform the world's oldest magic trick: to make that dollar bill climb out of your wallet, disappear, and then reappear inside their pocket. Overall, it is a tangled glob of bitter spleen that Melville surely needed to cough up. However, its tonic properties are a bit diluted by its own repetitions and the dumb passage of time.

Unrelated, but interesting to me: this is the first time I have encountered marginal notes in a book proving that I had definitely read it before. Yet, I had - and still have - absolutely no memory of it. It is quite unnerving. What else has oblivion claimed? This makes me wonder about the countless other things that I may have forgotten over the years.

The confined space of a Mississippi riverboat serves as the perfect stage for Melville to delve deep into the nature of men.

And it's important to note that when I say men, I'm truly struggling to recall a single female character in this context.

Melville explores not only their interactions and transactions but also their complex relationship to trust.

This riverboat is a great vehicle for his exploration, yet it requires a lot of effort from the reader to follow, and the rewards seem somewhat limited.

My favorite chapter, with its rather lengthy and humorous title, is a brief but insightful discourse on novelists and their characters.

Melville writes, “…an author, besides other things, must have seen much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he must have had much luck.”

In conclusion, “The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade” might have been an even better work had Melville been a bit luckier in this particular endeavor.

As the world progresses towards greater democratization, globalization, and egalitarianism, people and nations are becoming more abstract and interchangeable. We are approaching a global apotheosis of the Emersonian ideal of self-reliance, where individuals have no allegiances but only proximities. The leveling and anonymizing conditions of the megalopolis are undermining the contiguity of our social relationships. In such a context, the question of to whom or what we can appeal for a source of authority, legitimacy, or trust becomes fundamental.

This is precisely the question at the heart of Melville's brilliantly quirky final novel, The Confidence-Man. It is April Fool's Day 1857, and the steamship Fidèle is traveling down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans, carrying a diverse group of mutually-anonymous passengers. In the 1850s, Mississippi steamships were microcosms of American society, hosting characters from all walks of life.

On steamers like the Fidèle, as in American society then and now, and increasingly in the globalized or Americanized world, trust is the currency of life. However, in a society that has cast off the old markers of authority, trustworthiness is no longer tied to any universal standard. Trust must either be given arbitrarily or coaxed out of people by those who are skilled at securing it, regardless of their worthiness. In a democratic world, the con man seems to hold sway.

Melville's Confidence Man is the archetypal American in all his guises. He has many masks, advocates for overly charitable enterprises, and promises to satisfy the soul for a reasonable price. He exploits our desire to trust and believe, duping us time and again. But are we to blame for trusting too easily, or is it worse to be a default skeptic and become an irritated, isolated misanthrope? Reading The Confidence-Man may not provide a clear answer.

Here is a 1966 paper which I don't think is available online relevant to "a Green Prophet from Utah" (Confidence Man Chapter 2).

MELVILLE'S ALMA AND THE BOOK OF MORMON

ROBERT A. REES

In letters to three different people after Mardi was published, Melville spoke of its latent excellence. He told his father-in-law, Judge Lemuel Shaw, that "Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will solve 'Mardi'." To Richard Bentley, he said, "'Mardi' in its higher purposes, has not been written in vain." And to his friend Evert Duyckinck, he likened the novel to a plant that might flower like the aloe a hundred years hence or not flower at all. Melville was almost prophetic as scholars have only recently begun to unseal the meaning of Mardi and see it as an important document in his literary development.

This paper discusses the possible influence of The Book of Mormon on Melville's writing. Melville could have encountered it in one of the many libraries he had access to or through Mormon missionaries. The only specific mention of The Book of Mormon in his writing is in Pierre, where Plotinus Plinlimmon refuses a gift that includes it. The books Plinlimmon rejects contain teachings antithetical to his philosophy, suggesting Melville knew their contents and had a reason for grouping them.

The greatest evidence of Melville's having read The Book of Mormon is the parallel between the character Alma in Mardi and two characters of the same name in The Book of Mormon. In Mardi, Alma is an "illustrious prophet and teacher divine" who represents Christ. The two Almas in The Book of Mormon are also prophets or disciples of Christ. They have many similarities, such as being more interested in teaching than ruling, emphasizing the gospel of love, and teaching that love should be carried into practical living.

It is apparent that Melville could have used The Book of Mormon in writing Mardi. Nathalia Wright said that Melville mixed biblical lore with other history to create an indefinite background. In a letter to Duyckinck, Melville compared the fate of Mardi to that of an exiled Mormon, an interesting comparison given the parallels between his work and The Book of Mormon.

University of Wisconsin

footnotes available on request

Whoa! It truly took an enormous amount of effort to complete this. The text is far too ambiguous and cryptic to be easily digested. It is filled with archaic words that make it a challenge to understand.

Without the explanatory notes, it is extremely difficult to relate to the references of events and people. At the same time, the excessive use of internal allusion as a common literary device muddles the satirical flow of the story. Since I'm not really a big fan of this anymore, it becomes even more of a struggle.

However, it is full of beautiful passages that I chanted again and again, as if pondering deep thoughts. It is evident enough to make me concur with his cult that, indeed, he should be placed on a literary pedestal.

Now I'm left wondering if I still want to attempt another Herman Melville book, especially re-reading his Moby-Dick. I'm kind of traumatized by this second attempt. Haha. Maybe I will, since now I know that that Big Whale, perhaps a phallic symbol, has something to do with his darkest secret. Haha.

Wacky is such a unique and interesting word. It describes something or someone that is full of fun, creativity, and a touch of craziness.

When we think of wacky, we might picture a colorful and outlandish outfit, a wild and zany idea, or a person with a truly eccentric personality.

Wacky things have the power to make us laugh, smile, and think outside the box. They add a sense of excitement and adventure to our lives.

Whether it's a wacky party, a wacky game, or a wacky piece of art, these things have the ability to bring joy and entertainment to those around them.

So, the next time you come across something wacky, embrace it and enjoy the ride. Who knows, it might just lead you to a whole new world of fun and excitement.