David O. Russell’s film is just one in a long line of narratives whose protagonist is that quintessential American version of the trickster archetype: the confidence man (whence cometh the familiar sobriquet “con man”). Melville’s novel takes place on April Fool’s Day & was serendipitously published on April 1,1857. Just as a viewer of Russell’s film is “conned” so is a reader of Melville’s novel. Though that is merely one level of significance in this rich, protean narrative. Melville even succeeds in satirizing & critiquing his more prominent & successful contemporaries, taking aim at Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and this good friend Hawthorne.
Benjamin Franklin, Poe, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Joseph Heller are just a few other writers who have featured the confidence man in their works of fiction. Randy Newman has “celebrated” him in his music. And in the real world, the U.S. can boast of the likes of P.T. Barnum (he of “There’s a sucker is born every minute” fame, though it now seems a competitor said this deriding his rival’s success) & Joseph Smith— whose Book of Mormon con succeeded so well it became a worldwide religion —not to mention contemporary avatars like the swarm of televangelists who blight the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh, & the Fox News “fair & balanced” (barf!) bloviators.
Give Melville’s novel a look. It’s not initially an easy read. It can leave your head spinning at times until you get used to its shifting point of view and meandering narrative flow— no accident, after all, since the narrative mimics the basic action itself: a voyage down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans with all its riparian twist & turns. THE CONFIDENCE MAN is well worth the trip.
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