Confidence-Man His Masquerade

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

First published in New York on April Fool's Day 1857, it is the ninth book and final novel by American writer Herman Melville.

Centered on the title character, The Confidence-Man portrays a group of steamboat passengers. Their interlocking stories are told as they travel the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel's title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure. He sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the passengers. Their varied reactions constitute the bulk of the text. Each person, including the reader, is forced to confront the placement of his trust.

The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many readers place The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" as a precursor to 20th-century literary pre-occupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism.