Anyone here familiar with Melville's THE CONFIDENCE MAN-HIS MASQUERADE?

[Stanchetalarooni]

I just recently became aware of it and have been reading comments and critiques about it on the internet. I am waiting for my library to fill a request for it.
Melville offers a glum view of his 1850s America.
The key theme is of how exploitation takes place by gaining the confidence of others.
Melville shows how this confidence game is played on the unsuspecting through the social ranks of society, from the bottom all the way to the top.
I think that so many if not all of us here at DU have been on to the Bushco confidence game from the very beginning through our own personal victimizations at being conned. I know I have.
Is this where the word con as in con-game or ex-con comes from?

[LouisianaLiberal]

1. It's a difficult book.

Especially the Orchus (I think that was the name) section. I often think of parallels with current politics, but the book is about much more than it would first appear. I've read it twice in the last twenty years, and still have many questions about Melville's intent.

My favorite line goes something like this (can't find the book at the moment so from memory:) Who knows what more this Masquerade holds?

[saltpoint]

2. Very good question, Stanchetalarooni. I don't know if the derivation

of the con in this case dates to or pre-dates Melville, but will hunt around to see what the web has to say.

I love your context with the Bush administration. Melville had the privilege, whether he knew it then or not, to be a contemporary during Lincoln's time -- Lincoln being the only good Republican! -- while these days we're stuck with Dubya and Dick and Condi -- that bunch. (Maybe Melville wouldn't mind if CONdi became the new reference point for 'con' ...)

From Lincoln to George W. Bush is a precipitous plunge, isn't it? Dizzying and despairing. George Will -- a man I usually can't stand -- made a comparison once between Lincoln and the first George Bush, something to the effect that it is a sad collapse of a once-great political party to have begun so well and ended so poorly. Paraphrased, it went something like "...to be here with this president having begun with Abraham Lincoln, one is reminded that no matter how muddy the stream is at present it is one which nevertheless had snow at its source."

I hope your library gets off its hindend and fetches that Melville for you with dispatch.

[LouisianaLiberal]

3. One more thing

Just a suggestion. When you read it don't try to pin the theme down to "exploitation" or the use of the confidence game. Forget politics - Melville's "theme" is much more universal, and, I'm afraid, darker and more metaphysical. Pay attention to what the man with the weed says, and think of the boat as a microcosm.

I guess I better find it and read it again.