The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville

Philosophical dialogues with a riverboat grifter

Herman-Melville’s satirical novel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was published in 1857. A “confidence man” was the term used in Melville’s day for what we now refer to by the abbreviated designation of a con man—“confidence” in this case meaning “trust”—one who preys on the trusting souls of others. The story takes place on a Mississippi River steamboat traveling from St. Louis to New Orleans. The novel takes the form of a series of dialogues between two or three characters, different in each chapter, one of whom is a con man seeking money through various deceptive mean such as outright begging (with a feigned disability), soliciting investments for an imaginary business, collecting alms for a faux charity, or practicing ineffective medicine as an “herb doctor.” The title and subtitle of the book tell you that all of these con man are the same person who has adopted various disguises, but there’s nothing in the text to indicate that, and it really doesn’t matter to the story, thin as it is.

The Confidence-Man is not a novel in the traditional sense of a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is more a patchwork of scenes, most of which take the form of philosophical dialogues. The theme of the con man is often abandoned entirely in favor of extended digressions on varied topics such as Native American rights, the reliability of boys (as young employees), whether one should loan money to a friend, and the difference between a loan and a gift. Some of Melville’s stylistic choices make for difficult reading: Very few of the characters in the book have names. Most are referred to by generic appellations such as “the stranger,” “the cosmopolitan,” “the merchant,” etc. Sometimes in the middle of a long chapter it’s difficult to remember who’s even talking to whom. Is the stranger in this chapter the same stranger as in the last chapter? Which one of these characters is the confidence man in disguise? To whom are these ubiquitous “he” pronouns referring? Most annoying is the way the characters utter the word “Confidence!” over and over again throughout the text as if it were some kind of mantra.

The characters in The Confidence-Man call to mind the caricaturesque figures in a John Caleb Bingham painting (a Missouri artist who painted a few riverboats in his time). They come from all backgrounds, classes, and walks of life. In Melville’s dialogues, however, they all speak with the flowery, erudite speech of characters in a Shakespearean play. Speaking of which, I’ve always found it rather amazing that Melville evolved from a sailor who wrote about his personal travels to America’s premier man of letters. Much like Shakespeare, however, most of today’s readers would need a bevy of explanatory footnotes to really understand all of Melville’s antiquated lingo and historical and literary references. The Confidence-Man is a comic novel, but only someone with a master’s degree in 19th-century literature would laugh out loud at the humor. Literary critics love The Confidence-Man because its hodgepodge amalgamation of fiction, dialogues, essays, and poetry makes for a precocious work of modernism that maybe even shows inklings of postmodern metafiction. Most nonacademic readers, however, will likely find that although the book has its insightful moments, the sum of its disparate ingredients adds up to something less than its individual parts. Even Melville admitted that The Confidence-Man was a vehicle for publishing short works that were rejected elsewhere.

I’m generally an admirer of Melville’s work, but I hated this. Every once in a while I would think “good point” or “that’s clever,” but I can’t say that at any point in reading The Confidence-Man I ever enjoyed it. Melville is one of America’s greatest authors, but this book is far from the Great American Novel, and one could argue that it’s not a novel at all, just a dumping ground for thoughts.

Redburn: His First Voyage by Herman Melville

A sailor’s life told with humor and poignancy

Redburn, the fourth novel by Herman Melville, was published in 1849, two years before his masterpiece Moby-Dick. Like Moby-Dick and the handful of novels that came before, Redburn is a nautical narrative. Similar to Melville’s earlier books Typee and Omoo, Redburn bears an eyewitness immediacy that indicates this is likely a semi-autobiographical work of Melville’s own seafaring adventures, though no doubt portions of the work are fictionalized. The adventure in question is not as exciting as that of Typee, but Melville’s skills as a prose stylist have improved quite a bit since his literary debut. Redburn, which reads a bit like Moby-Dick but without all the deep philosophizing, is also a work in which Melville frequently exhibits his sense of humor.

Wellingborough Redburn, the son of a formerly wealthy gentleman, lives in a village on the Hudson River in New York State. After his father undergoes a fall from grace in business and finances, Redburn is forced to work for a living. Unable to find gainful employment in his hometown, he decides to follow his natural wanderlust into a career as a sailor. In embarking on this new life, he must start at the bottom, and he signs on as a “boy” on the ship Highlander bound for Liverpool. Blue-collar workers derogatorily might refer to Redburn as a “college boy” for the airs of intellect and refinement that he puts on. In the world of nautical employment, however, he is a greenhorn and a bumbler. One can sense that Melville is making fun of his younger self when he points out what a ridiculous fish-out-of-water Redburn is in this harsh new environment. As Redburn learns the ins and outs of the sailing life, the reader learns along with him and shares in his embarrassments. While Redburn is forced to live through these indignities, however, the reader has the luxury of laughing from the sidelines.

In Redburn, Melville presents a very interestingly unglamorized view of shipboard life. Once the boat reaches Liverpool, however, the narrative loses some steam. Melville digresses into some extended travel literature critical of the city of Liverpool, of which there’s a bit too much, but he eventually returns to the seafaring narrative. The laughs are not so forthcoming in the book’s latter half, however. Instead, Melville delivers poignancy and pathos through some memorable incidents in the lives of Redburn’s crewmates.

Masculinity is a theme that’s examined throughout the book. Most of the sailors on board the Highlander are of the aggressively macho variety, the extreme embodiment of which is Jackson, who almost resembles the alpha male of a gorilla troop. The more seasoned members of the crew are always ready to point out what they perceive as a lack of manliness on the part of Redburn. The title character gets off easily, however, compared to his friend Harry Bolton, who is described as such a soft and sensitive dandy that he comes across as somewhat of an androgyne. It seems as if a few characters in the book are intended to be gay (including Bolton, but not Redburn), though Melville couldn’t explicitly state that in a work of 1840s America literature. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge homoeroticism as a fact of life aboard ship. Melville makes it none too subtly clear that after long months at sea the macho sailors, tired of looking at each other’s ugly mugs, would vie for the attentions of a comely, effeminate male passenger or crewmate, even if the attentions paid were nonsexual.

Although this novel isn’t loaded with symbolism and mysticism to the extent of Moby-Dick, it still ends up being surprisingly profound for a book that starts out as a rather lighthearted fictionalized memoir. More so than the earlier novels in his career, Redburn shows Melville rising to the level of literary greatness one would expect from the author of Moby-Dick. 

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Mardi by Herman Melville

Protracted Pacific allegory

Nowadays Herman Melville is best known as the author of Moby-Dick, but in his lifetime he was popularly known as the writer of Typee and Omoo. These two books, adventure memoirs of Melville’s own travels to islands in the South Pacific, established him as a successful author. Melville had higher literary aspirations, however. With his third book he decided to turn away from nonfiction and become a novelist. The result, his 1849 novel Mardi, was poorly received by the critics of his day and is still regarded as one of his least successful efforts.

At first, Mardi seems like just another variation on the plots of Typee and Omoo. The narrator is a crew member on a whaling ship plying the tropics of the Pacific Ocean. Unable to find a profitable population of whales in equatorial regions, the captain decides to head North to the Arctic. Such a journey is not what the narrator signed on for, so he decides to jump ship, accompanied by his new friend, a brawny Nordic fellow named Jarl. After escaping in a small boat, the two figure that if they continue to head West they will eventually run into some tropical islands. The journey is more arduous and protracted then expected. In fact, a quarter of the entire novel is occupied with their wayward drifting before the pair ever reach land. Along the way they encounter a few other characters, but just as the reader starts to get involved with them, Melville pretty much abandons their story line and takes the book in an entirely different direction.

The castaways finally reach an island, where they receive a friendly welcome from the Natives. This island is one of many forming an archipelago the local inhabitants call Mardi. The narrator is given an island name, Taji, and welcomed among the ranks of island kings. Along the way he has found a love interest, named Yillah. Inexplicably, she’s a white woman, probably because the audience of Melville’s day would not have tolerated an interracial romance. One day Yillah disappears, and Taji ventures to the neighboring islands in search of her. This plot development, however, is simply an excuse to send Taji on a Gulliver’s Travels-esque tour of the islands, though the inhabitants of Mardi are not as fantastical as those Gulliver encountered. Rather, Melville uses the various islands to demonstrate various political systems, philosophical beliefs, or moral lessons. One island, for example, is a blatant surrogate for the Confederate States of America. Other islands illustrate the pros and cons of monarchy versus democracy or different denominations of faith. Taji is accompanied on his journey by a handful of local monarchs. At every stop the group engages in spirited philosophical debates reminiscent of Plato’s dialogues.

The text is thick with references to ancient history, classical mythology, and classic literature, all used as metaphors to describe the islanders. Melville also writes in a code of tropical lingo with which the reader must gradually become accustomed. The word “Mardi” is used as a synonym for the world, “Oro” is God, Alma is the name of a Christlike prophet, and so on. Mardi is loaded with beautifully poetic passages of writing, as well as some truly profound thoughts. Each chapter on its own could be studied and quoted for pearls of wisdom, but the cumulative effect of the 195 chapters in total is somewhat of a jumbled mess. Melville just tries to do too much with this novel when he should have spread all these ideas over the course of three or four books. Melville scholars probably love Mardi, because they can no doubt find much insight into the author’s personal philosophy and political views. Most other readers, however, will find Mardi overwhelmingly long, glacially paced, and narratively disappointing.
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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Suspense on a slave ship

Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno was first serialized in three issues of Putnam’s Monthly magazine in 1855. It was later included in Melville’s 1856 short story collection The Piazza Tales after being slightly revised. It is this latter version that I read. Melville loosely based his novella on actual historical events.

In 1799, Captain Amasa Delano (a real historical figure) of the American sealing ship Bachelor’s Delight anchors his ship in the bay of Santa Maria, on the coast of Chile. He notices the approach of a second ship moving in a peculiarly listless manner, as if in distress. To investigate, Delano boards the ship, named the San Dominick, and is met by its captain, a Spaniard named Benito Cereno. The ship’s primary cargo consists of over a hundred Black slaves, who are watched over by what appears to be an understaffed crew of whites. Unlike just about any slave ship I’ve ever heard of, the slaves are not chained up below but rather allowed to move freely about the deck. Delano, however, doesn’t seem to find this unusual. Cereno explains that a combination of bad weather and illness has reduced both crew and cargo. He needs food and fresh water to continue his journey to a safe and sizable port. Delano agrees to supply the San Dominick with provisions. He is troubled, however, by the odd behavior of Cereno, who exhibits poor social graces and a lack of gentlemanly breeding bordering on outright rudeness.

This novella is notable for its depiction of slavery and its questioning of white Americans’ attitudes towards the slave trade and African Americans. Melville’s narrative illuminates the arguments over slavery that would soon lead to the American Civil War. I have always been impressed by Melville’s lack of racism compared to other white writers of his era. Whether he’s describing the native islanders in Typee or characters such as Queequeg, Daggoo, and Pip in Moby-Dick, Melville consistently treats people of color with dignity and respect. In Benito Cereno, the African slaves are seen indirectly through the eyes and attitudes of Delano and Cereno, who often view the Blacks with fear and mistrust. Through plot details and third-person narration, however, Melville reveals his own sympathies towards the Africans who have been stolen from their homelands and subjugated by an oppressive system.

While the meanings and motives behind the novella may deserve praise and admiration, the narrative itself can make for a somewhat tedious and disappointing reading experience at times. Melville errs on the side of too much descriptive minutiae, calling to mind the more verbose writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Joseph Conrad. In the first half of Benito Cereno in particular, Melville repetitively emphasizes the “peculiar” behavior of the title character, describing every twitch, blink, and bead of sweat until the plot positively crawls.

The second half of the story is a marked improvement in pacing. The whole plot trajectory, however, seems intended to deliver a climactic surprise, but I could see it coming from the very beginning. Perhaps it was Melville’s intention that the reader would always be two steps ahead of Delano in solving the riddle of Benito Cereno’s unusual behavior, but if so it considerably lessens the impact of the plot’s eventual revelations. Other than Moby-Dick, Benito Cereno may be the Melville work that has received the most acclaim from critics and literary scholars. This may have much to do with its historical commentary and Melville’s enlightened views on race. Judging by storytelling alone, however, I didn’t find this novella as compelling as Moby-Dick, Typee, or Bartleby, the Scrivener.
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Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile by Herman Melville

A minuteman’s odyssey
Israel Potter, originally published in 1855, is perhaps Herman Melville’s least-known novel, but it is wholly undeserving of the obscurity into which it has fallen. The story is based on the autobiography of an actual American Revolutionary veteran of the same name, though Melville took plenty of liberties in his adaptation. The title character is a farmer from the Berkshires of western Massachussetts who enlists as a minuteman in the colonial army and fights in the Battle of Bunker Hill. He then volunteers for duty with the newborn U.S. Navy, but his ship is captured by the British, and he is taken to England as a prisoner of war. Shortly after his arrival he escapes his captors, but must constantly elude further capture while he does his part to further the American cause on the opposite side of the Atlantic.

I must confess a predisposed fondness for fiction pertaining to the American Revolution. I can’t understand why so many novels about the Civil War are churned out every year while this fascinating conflict that gave birth to our nation is largely ignored. When it comes to literature about the American Revolution, the obvious works to compare this book to are the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper, for better or worse, would have taken this story and romanticized it into a heroic epic. While I would hesitate to call Melville a realist, he as usual scorns romantic clichés and pens the story in his own unconventional style. The first few chapters are tough to engage with. Though I’ve never read the source material, Melville’s adaptation feels like it may be a little too faithful to the original. It’s all “Israel went here; he did this; he went there; he saw that,” with little insight into the character or his thoughts and feelings. Early on there are about seven or eight successive instances of capture and escape, when two or three harrowing examples probably would have sufficed.

Beyond the first few chapters, however, the novel improves considerably. As the story goes on, Israel develops into a sort of 18th-century Forrest Gump. He drifts through the events of the plot like a leaf on a stream, coming into close association with several luminary historical personages of his day, whose identities I won’t reveal here. For much of the novel, it seems the purpose of the book is not to tell Israel’s story, but rather for Melville to present his personal take on these famous historic individuals, and also to recount classic naval battles that were perhaps household names for the readers of his day but are all but forgotten to today’s audience. His treatment of the historical characters is a fun mix of reverence and caricature. Although the subtitle of the novel is His Fifty Years of Exile, the story really only concentrates on the first few years of that fifty. Israel himself is a cipher for much of that time, merely a lens through which we view the events of the narrative. It isn’t until the last few chapters that the reader begins to truly identify with him as a man and sympathize with his plight. Melville’s purpose for writing the book was to draw attention to the forgotten contributions of those who fought for America’s independence. Several wars later, the relevance of such commemoration has been dulled by the distance of time, but by the novel’s close the reader does feel a profound pathos for this humble and dedicated soldier.

The main obstacle to enjoying this work may be Melville’s usual thesaurus-exhausting vocabulary, but that’s also part of the fun. After the first few chapters one becomes accustomed to his highfalutin word choices, his arcane analogies, and his somewhat Shakespearean cadence. Beneath the surface of this ornate prose, the author’s wry sense of humor is constantly bubbling. Israel Potter may not be Melville’s best novel, but it’s still a buried treasure worth digging for.
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Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville

Philosophical allegory or ridiculous farce?

Herman Melville
Portrait by Joseph O. Eaton

Bartleby, the Scrivener, a novella by Herman Melville, was originally published in 1853. The story is related in the first person by an unnamed narrator—an elderly attorney who runs a small law office on Wall Street. He is assisted in his practice by three clerks, or scriveners, known only by the nicknames of Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. When prosperous times lead the narrator to add another scrivener to his firm, he hires a mild-mannered fellow named Bartleby for the position. Bartleby performs his duties competently at first, but his performance gradually wanes as he simply refuses to do what is asked of him. To all his employer’s commands, Bartleby responds placidly with the simple statement, “I would prefer not to.” The narrator, through a mixture of saintly patience, an overdeveloped sense of propriety, and a brotherly sympathy for this poor and pitiful scrivener, responds to his inactive employee with more compassion and tolerance than seems humanly possible, until eventually Bartleby’s presence becomes unbearable. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he tries, the flabbergasted lawyer cannot manage to rid himself of this useless and hopelessly passive little man who has established himself as a fixture in the office.

There are no doubt great philosophical depths to the story of Bartleby. Like Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick, there is an ambiguity to the piece that opens itself up to multiple interpretations. One could see Bartleby as an admirable exemplar of tenacious human will or as an embodiment of disgraceful societal apathy. Despite Bartleby’s bizarre behavior, his employer comes across as even more deranged for putting up with him for so long. Perhaps Melville is making a satirical or symbolic statement about the social or political climate of his times. I must confess, however, that if there was indeed a valuable moral lesson to be learned here, it was lost on me. My enjoyment of this piece stems not so much from an appreciation for any deep, philosophical or metaphorical meaning, but rather from the fact that I just found it hilarious. The frustrated attempts by the flustered narrator to exorcise himself of Bartleby are an absolute joy to read. Those who only know Melville from Moby-Dick will be pleasantly surprised by his sense of humor, which is apparent in many of his writings, but nowhere more so than here. The characters are insightfully drawn caricatures, like those in some of the more comical novels of Charles Dickens. Though the piece was written 160 years ago, it is surprisingly modern. There is an absurdist quality to it that is more in keeping with the works of Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, or Franz Kafka. The weakest part of the novella is its ending, when Melville makes an attempt to justify Bartleby’s behavior, for it is an incongruous departure from the absurdist tone maintained throughout the rest of the story.

Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story that was years ahead of its time, and it remains relevant and entertaining to the reader of today. It is a far cry from Melville’s sea stories, so even if you’re not a fan of works like Moby-Dick or Typee that’s no indication of whether or not you will appreciate this unconventional work. Anyone who enjoys classic American literature should give Bartleby a try. It is one of the more exceptional pieces of short fiction in 19th-century American literature.
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Omoo by Herman Melville

Adventures in indolence
Omoo, originally published in 1847, was Herman Melville’s second book and the sequel to his smash hit Typee. Like Typee, Omoo is an autobiographical though somewhat fictionalized account of Melville’s own adventures in the South Pacific. This book picks up exactly where Typee left off, with Melville being rescued in the Marquesas by a whaling ship, the “Julia.” He agrees to serve on its crew until they reach the next port, but his injured leg prevents him from taking much of an active part in the sailing duties. There is a great deal of unrest among Melville’s crew mates on the “Julia.” Conditions are poor on the run-down vessel, the captain is a weak leader, and the mate maltreats the men. When the captain falls ill and must go ashore for medical attention, the crew sees his absence as legitimate grounds for releasing them from their contracts of service. The mate disagrees, and wants to continue the whaling voyage under his own command. The dispute is brought before a British consul, who rules that the crew must remain with their ship. When they refuse, they are branded mutineers and confined to a Tahitian prison.

These are but the first few links in a chain of events that Melville relates in the book. I use the word “events” rather than “adventures” because there’s little action or suspense in the book. Melville and his newfound companion Dr. Long Ghost wander the villages of Tahiti and its neighboring islets, their sole goal being to impose on the hospitality of the natives as much as they can while doing as little work as possible. If they happen to catch the eye of a few of the native damsels, so much the better. The romance of traveling through exotic, unspoiled locales is often lost in the daily monotony of trying to fill one’s belly. At times the chapters read like a string of dinner menus, and the villages tend to blend into one another indistinguishably.

As in Typee or Moby-Dick, Melville breaks up the primary narrative by inserting periodic essays on diverse subjects related to the tropical islands of the Pacific, such as geography, botany, or politics. For a white man writing over a century and a half ago, Melville displays an astonishingly enlightened attitude toward the Pacific islanders. He expresses great admiration for the natives, and thinks they would have been much better off had they never encountered white men. However, the point is not pressed as strongly here as it was in his first book. In Typee, the corruption and exploitation of the natives is a major theme; in Omoo, it is merely an accepted fact lurking in the background.

The lazy ramblings of Melville and his physician sidekick would be a total bore were it not for Melville’s prodigious talents as a storyteller. Those hoping for a rollicking tale of adventure on the high seas will be disappointed by the lack of action, but there is a definite pleasure derived from living vicariously through these two tropical vagrants. Melville peppers his stories with bits of arcane knowledge and a wry sense of humor. Reading Omoo is like listening to the dubious recollections of the resident windbag at your local pub. The entertainment value of the tale comes not so much from its vitality or its veracity, but from the amusing eloquence with which it is told.
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Typee by Herman Melville

Nuee Nuee Motarkee! (Very, very good)
These days Herman Melville is famous as the author of Moby-Dick, but during his lifetime he was renowned as the author of Typee. This book—his first, originally published in 1846—became an overnight sensation and instantly made Melville a household name. Typee is a semi-autobiographical work based on Melville’s travels to the Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific, and his life there amid a much feared tribe of cannibals.

After months at sea aboard a whaler, the narrator (presumably Melville himself, but only referred to in the text as Tom or Tommo) decides he’s had enough of the substandard living conditions and abusive treatment on board ship. When the vessel docks at the island of Nukuheva for supplies, he decides to go awol and hide in the jungle until the ship leaves port, thus freeing himself from his servitude. He is joined by a fellow crewman, Toby, and the two climb up into the mountains of the island, hoping to bask in a tropical paradise. They soon discover, however, that island life can be surprisingly harsh. After a few days the two are on the verge of starving, and the narrator has a mysterious and painful swelling in his leg. The two decide to throw themselves at the mercy of the natives, hoping to meet up with the friendly Happar tribe. Instead, they find themselves captives of the dreaded Typees, a tribe renowned for their hostility, ferocity, and cannibalism. It soon appears their fearsome reputation is undeserved, however, as they treat their captives with the utmost respect and benevolence, at times coddling the injured narrator as if he were an infant. Despite their kind treatment, however, for some unknown reason they absolutely refuse to let him go. Are they so obsessed with hospitality that they feel compelled to keep the white man as some kind of tribal mascot, or is there a darker, hidden motive behind their actions? Could they be fattening him up for some cannibal feast?

Typee provides tense moments of gripping suspense interspersed with interludes of comical culture clash. The enjoyment is heightened by Melville’s prose, which is a pleasure to read for its shameless verbosity. His sentences are simple and brisk, yet it’s as if he’s consulted a thesaurus for each noun and verb. College fraternities could make a drinking game out of Typee, downing a beer every time he uses the word “verdure.” The keg would soon run dry.

Given the fact this book was written over 150 years ago, Melville exhibits an astounding degree of racial sensitivity. He shows great respect for the natives and their culture, even going so far as to assert that the islanders of the South Pacific would be far better off had they never encountered a single white trader or Christian missionary—surely an unpopular notion for his time. He clearly feels that the “civilized” tribes of Europe and America could learn a thing or two from the simple and honest lifestyle of these people so unfairly dubbed “savages.” On the other hand, Melville does not shy away from portraying less flattering aspects of native life, thus stopping short of perpetuating the stereotype of the “noble savage.” Though not an entirely factual memoir, Melville’s narrative nevertheless has an overall ring of authenticity, objectivity, and sincerity. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of traveling to a remote, exotic land to immerse oneself in a foreign culture, this delightful hybrid of adventure novel and travel memoir provides a welcome dose of escapist adventure and educational enlightenment.
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