The Confidence Man
About this work
Onboard the Fidele, 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.
Where to find it
When identifiers are available, links use a visible edition; if not, they search for the work externally.
Subjects
- Fiction
- Swindlers and swindling
- Steamboats
- Mississippi River
- Confidence-man (Melville, Herman)
- Swindlers and swindling in literature
- Classic Literature
- American fiction (fictional works by one author)
- Fiction, general
- Mississippi, fiction
- Fiction, humorous
- Children's fiction