Books with title Confidence

Onboard the Fidèle, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises – from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a ‘cosmopolitan’ gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool’s Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.

Onboard the Fidèle, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises – from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a ‘cosmopolitan’ gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool’s Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.

Onboard the Fidèle, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises – from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a ‘cosmopolitan’ gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool’s Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.

Long 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.

- Herman MELVILLE was born in 1819 and died in 1891 (at age 72) in the United States. He is an American novelist, novelist, essayist and poet. It belongs to the movement of Romanticism. His genre is the novel, poetry, travel story and great tale. He is one of the greatest writers of American literature.In 1839, Melville enlisted on a merchant ship. After that, he traveled the western border and descended the Mississippi.In 1840, Melville embarked on a 358-ton whaler bound for the Pacific, visiting the Galapagos Islands.In 1842, in the Marquesas Islands, he deserted with Richard Tobbias Greene, the "Toby" of his book Typee (Taïpi).He managed to leave the Taipivai Valley on the Australian whaler Lucy Ann and arrived in Tahiti, where he was arrested for mutiny aboard Lucy Ann and imprisoned. He escapes again to join Moorea, then Hawaii.Subsequently, he became a seaman in the crew of a US Navy warship.In 1844, he put an end to his life of adventurer on the marine ships. From now on, he devotes himself to recount his marine experience with stories of exotic adventures with an autobiographical character. In his writings, he also addresses philosophical questions that resonate with the political news of his time.He had become friends with the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne.In 1857, he published The Confidence Man.From 1857 to 1860, he became a lecturer. This occupation has been beneficial to him.In 1866, he obtained a position of customs inspector of the city of New York. There are 19 years left.In 1886, he decided to retire as an employee, especially since his wife was able to receive a legacy that could provide them with financial security. It is also an opportunity to resume his pen writer.This author has the genius of existentialist literature and the literature of the absurd, among others. - CONFIDENCE-MAN is a fiction of the American writer Herman Melville.This satire was published in 1857 in New York, USA, on April Fool's Day.This novel describes passengers on a steamboat, Ironically named the Faithful, sailing on the Mississippi to New Orleans, mired in complicated stories of encounters with a mysterious figure of disguise, master of the scam. It's total irony and loss of control. The newcomer is introduced to highlight the degree of trust of each other in the face of others, or perhaps highlight the art of bullshit, a calamity among others in society.The book is a satire that aims to address several themes, including lack of sincerity and cynicism.

At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream–colors, at the water–side in the city of St. Louis.His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet–bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger.In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities, he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East; quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what purported to be a careful description of his person followed.

The Confidence-Man is an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the several steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Herman Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. His best known works include Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, its sequel Omoo, and the great classic Moby-Dick.

At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream–colors, at the water–side in the city of St. Louis. His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet–bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger. In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans.