A scathing, razor-sharp satire set on a New Orleans-bound riverboat, The
Confidence-Man exposes the fraudulent optimism of so many American idols
and idealists--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and P. T.
Barnum, in particular--and draws a dark vision of a country being
swallowed by its illusions of progress.Why is Dalkey Archive doing yet
another edition of The Confidence-Man? And why is it doing Melville at
all? First, this edition, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill over
forty years ago, contains remarkable annotations by H. Bruce Franklin,
intended for both the general reader and the scholar. It's an edition we
have long admired. More importantly, we believe that The Confidence-Man
is America's first postmodern novel--game-like, darkly comic, and
completely inventive.