“In The Confidence-Man,” writes John Bryant in his Introduction, “Melville
found a way to render our tragic sense of self and society through the
comic strategies of the confidence game. He puts the reader in the game to
play its parts and to contemplate the inconsistencies of its knaves and
fools.” Set on a Mississippi steamer on April Fool’s Day and populated by a
series of shape-shifting con men, The Confidence-Man is a challenging
metaphysical and ethical exploration of antebellum American society. Set
from the first American edition of 1857, this Modern Library paperback
includes an Appendix with Bryant’s innovative “fluid text” analysis of
early manuscript fragments from Melville’s novel.