Victory is in many ways more fluid and readable than Conrad's more dense works (for comparison sake I'd previously read Heart of Darkness and Conrad's collection of short stories Tales of Unrest.) In Victory we have Conrad's standard fare of tragedy and man's isolation, but in this case wrapped in a tale of adventure and swept along by an uncharacteristically eventful plot.

Conrad's works have, of course, been reviewed to exhaustion; the only thing that I could hope to add would be my emotional response to the novel as a reader.

Personally through the majority of the novel I found Heyst to be the only truly well defined character. Much of what we learn of him is revealed indirectly through the observations of others, but somehow Conrad manages to use this method to flesh out a complex and intriguing figure in Heyst. The remanding characters, while interesting, serve mostly as scenery. The villains Jones and Ricardo, while interesting, struck me not so much as human characters but as forces of impending doom; they could have as easily been an approaching storm or a plague or any other brand of natural disaster. The girl Lena in the end is the one exception; perhaps the one thing that I found most gratifying is the way in which her character developed as the novel neared its climax.

The Penguin Classics version is well footnoted for those of you (like me) that would have missed some of the more obscure Biblical references and allusions to Paradise Lost. The notes also comment on the narrator's shifting viewpoint, and on revisions Conrad made to subsequent editions. For those readers interested in an insight into Conrad's thinking I'd recommend this version.

Victory is the story of a man named Heyst who leads an isolated life in the South Pacific. However, he is drawn out of his isolation when he brings a woman to his island home. A chance encounter between a dishonest German who dislikes Heyst and two criminals sets up the dramatic ending. Conrad's style is as fluid as in his better known books, such as Lord Jim, and it is amazing that someone could write English so well who did not learn it until later in life and who always spoke it with a heavy Polish accent. Victory is similar to Conrad's other works in that the plot flirts with melodrama, but always is rooted in realism. Those who read the book will find the title apt.

Victory is the best of the handful of Conrad novels I have read (for reference sake, the others are Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo). For one thing, the other novels were much heavier in their narrative and descriptive content. As a result, I often suffered from mental imagery overload when plodding through a page-long paragraph. Victory has more dialogue, making it an easier read. Conrad's characters are always great, and the ones in this book are no exception. I also really liked the correlation between these characters and their environment. Heyst living in a serene yet isolated island matched his aloofness perfectly. As the book reaches its climax and tensions reach a boiling point, Conrad adds to this tension in godlike fashion, as the storm evinces the internal and external struggles occurring in Heyst. Of course, Conrad don't write no happy tales (sic), but in the end, I think that the title Victory was still very appropriate. This was an excellent read and one of the best novels I have read in a long time.

A usual book review outlines something of the plot, not enough to give everything away, but at least something to catch a potential reader's fancy. I cannot assure you that this book has much of plot---some men come together to run a new bi-weekly magazine in New York in the 1880s, their financial backer has hickish, conservative tendencies and he opposes a certain impoverished writer who supports socialism (then a wild-eyed fantasy. This rich man's son, who abhors any form of business, is made into the managing editor. A crisis develops, takes a sudden unexpected turn, and the men buy out the backer, who leaves for Europe. Most novels have a main character whose moods and motivations are central to the work. Not A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. Several people figure almost equally in this respect, none of them women, but women are developed more than in most male-authored novels of the time, even including a sympathetic view of a very independent female character. Basil March might be taken for the main character, but that would be mostly because he is introduced first. He is abandoned for long stretches while we follow the lives and personalities of others.

Yet, I must say, I admired Howells' novel very much. It is not for those who require action, sex, or dramatic events. Rather, it is a slice of life of the period, of the place, of family life and social repartee that may be unequalled. Though Howells claimed to be a "realist" and he is often spoken of, it seems, as one of such a school in American literature, the novel oscillates between extremely vivid descriptions of all varieties of life in New York, humanist philosophizing, and mild melodrama, thus, I would not class it as a truly realist novel in the same sense as say, "McTeague" by Frank Norris. Howells had the American optimism, the reluctance to dwell on the darker sides of human nature. This novel may draw accusations, then, of naivete. I think that would be short-sighted. Henry James and Faulkner might be deeper psychologically and Hemingway more sculpted, but Howells sometimes puts his finger right on the very essence of American ways of thinking and on American character. Some sections, like for instance the long passage on looking for an apartment in New York-over thirty pages---simply radiate genius. The natural gas millionaire and his shrewish daughter; the gung-ho, go-getter manager of the magazine; the dreamy, but selfish artists, the Southern belle---all these may be almost stock characters in 20th century American letters, but can never have been better summarized than here. Two statements made by Basil March, a literary editor married into an old Boston family, sum up the feel of A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, a novel that takes great cognizance of the potential for change in people (always an optimist's point of view). First, he says, "There's the making of several characters in each of us; we are each several characters and sometimes this character has the lead in us, and sometimes that." And lastly, he says "I don't know what it all means, but I believe it means good." Howells was no doubt a sterling man and this, perhaps his best novel, reflects that more than anything else.

This title should be on the syllabus of every American lit class. Read it and you'll realize that the canon is as full of holes as a chuck of swiss cheese.

William Dean Howells in his lifetime was ranked with his friend,Henry James as a writer of a new realistic kind of fiction,and however mild and idealistic it seems today,was considered by its admirers as refreshingly revolutionary and by others as cynical meanspiritedness seeking to sacrifice all that was "noble" in art.While actually having little in common with James, (he seems to be closer in spirit to Trollope)Howells' name was always side by side with James' and it was probably supposed that their future reputations would share a similiar fate. Unfortunately,that was not the case-while Henry James is considered a giant of American belles lettres,Howells has been relegated to minor status and except by a happy few,little read."A Hazard of New Fortunes",possibly Howell's best work,is one of the better known-but most people aren't aware that it is one of the greatest works of fiction in American literature.It is an impressive panorama of American life towards the end of the last century.People from Boston,the west,the south and Europe all converge in New York to enact a comedy of manners or tragedy,depending on their fortunes,that compares in its scope and masterly dissection of society, with"The Way We Live Now".Howell's light irony touches upon the eternal divisions between the haves and the have-nots,male and female,the socially secure and the unclassed,and with the Marches,the book's ostensible heroes,uses a typical normal middleclass family-with all of its intelligence,understanding,decency on one side and with all of its pretensions,timidity,selfishness on the other-to reflect the social unease and lack of justice in a supposedly sane and fair world.The book is subtle in its power and underneath its light tone probes the problems of its day with compassion and insight.Indeed,many of the problems it depicts are still relevant today.William Dean Howells wrote so many novels of worth that he deserves to have more than just a cult following; "A Hazard of New Fortunes" amply illustrates this.

I feel quite strange presuming to give a numerical rating to a book by one of American literature's greatest authors.

It's important for readers to realize that White-Jacket is not what would, in the modern day, be considered a novel. There is essentially no plot structure. It's a melange of events, descriptive passages and polemic, narrated by the eponymous White-Jacket, whom I suspect of being Melville himself. At times the book is entertainingly humorous - as when the narrator tries to get rid of his famous jacket. And much of the description of life aboard a man-of-war is fascinating -- the book would make a helpful companion for people reading modern novels such as O'Brian's series. (And, of course, White-Jacket probably was one of the sources used by O'Brian and other aquatic novelists.) The polemic -- Melville's rants against flogging and his pacifist pleas -- I found tiresome, as I always find polemic, regardless of its aims.

If you find yourself in a position where the individuals in authority over you are, in the actual state of affairs, your moral inferiors, then on this level alone you will be able to appreciate this book.

Fascinating, entertaining account of life on a man-of-war. Hilarious in parts; always subversive. Melville's mock glorification of the U.S. Navy and its officers is brilliant.

The Blithedale Romance is a somewhat dark, depressing tale of idealism gone awry and of friendship and love torn asunder by private ambitions. The romance of these pages is not what many modern readers may expect to find here; there is no penultimate consummation of love among these characters, nor is there much happiness indeed to be discerned from the complexity of their relations one with another. Much has been made of Hawthorne's own temporary residence at the utopian-minded Brook Farm a decade previous to the publication of this work; it is true that some of the experiences derive from his own memories, but Hawthorne went to great pains to make clear that this is a romance first and foremost and bears no direct relation to the experiences of his own life. Those who would read this novel in an attempt to get at Hawthorne's true feelings about the utopian socialism he flirted with and watched from afar during his pivotal creative years may well miss out on the thought-provoking treatment of such wonderfully literary, fascinating characters as Hollingsworth the idealistic philanthropist, Zenobia the modern feminist reformer with a fatal flaw inimical to her self-realization, and the sweet and frail Priscilla.

The first-person narrator of this story is Miles Coverdale, a man difficult to come to terms with. He joins with the pioneers behind the utopian farming community of Blithedale and truly takes heart in the possibility of this new kind of communitarian life offering mankind a chance to live lives of purpose and fulfillment, yet at times he steps outside of events and seems to view the whole experience as a study in human character and a learning experience to which his heart-strings are only loosely bound. The drama that unfolds is told in his perspective only, and one can never know how much he failed to discern or the degree to which his own conjectures are correct. His eventual castigation of Hollingsworth cannot be doubted, however. This rather unfeeling man joins the community on the hidden pretext of acquiring the means for fulfilling his overriding utopian dream of creating an edifice for the reformation of criminals. This dream takes over his life, Coverdale observes, and his once-noble philanthropic passion morphs him into an overzealous, unfeeling man who brings ruin upon those who were once his friends. It is really Zenobia, though, upon which the novel feeds. She is a fascinating woman of means who makes the Blithedale dream a reality, a bold reformer seeking a new equality for women in the world who ultimately, at Hawthorne's bidding, suffers the ignominious fate of the fragile spirit she seemed to have overcome.

This is not a novel that will immediately enthrall you in its clutches. The first half of the novel is sometimes rather slow going, but I would urge you not to cast this book aside carelessly. The final chapters sparkle with drama and human passion, and you find yourself suddenly immersed in this strange community of tragic friends-turned-foes. You care deeply what happens to such once-noble spirits, and while you may not find joy in the tragic conclusion of the ill-fated social experiment of Blithedale, you will certainly find your soul stirred by the tragedy of unfolding events.

vintage is always a pleasure, presuming of course that we're talking about the real thing. there's a regal pace about hawthorne's prose that is undeniably hawthorne and no one else. there's that rigid, regimental quality uniquely hawthornian, a sense of iron discipline, utterly lacking in modern american prose. if vintage is what you seek, check out the blithedale romance: it'll set you straight.

This is not only a book with which any Hawthorne fan should be familiar, it is a necessity to anyone who is studying the Romantic Tradition. This text is an elegant commentary on the ideals that the Romantics held dear, such as the authenticity of a life close to the earth, the superiority of existence outside of common society rather than within it, and our innate ability, with enough well-directed effort, to transcend our own humanity. Like a breath of fresh air after Wordsworth, Thoreau, Keats, and both Shelleys, Hawthorne's cynicism and pessimism on these topics shine clearly through this work. Though admittedly he has failed in his announced effort to make the text cheerful and lighthearted, this is not such a complete failure as one may initially suppose, when this novel is contrasted with his others. Much of the humor that is in the book is centered around the narrator, Coverdale, whose nature forces him to fit in with his surroundings in a way which is a bit askew, precipitating enjoyable scenes which the reader can appreciate, if he or she has refrained from judging this main character. The treasure in this book, however, is not mainly in its humor, but rather (for me at least - each person presumably takes from it something different) in the elegance with which so many universal truths are exposed (often only partially, so that the reader can feel a sense of triumph when they wholly uncover them) to our conscious awareness. As you have no doubt already surmised, I highly recommend this novel.

Like all devoted lovers of Jane Austen, I have long pondered why she chose to write this, of all books, at time she was experiencing the intoxicating success of Pride and Prejudice.

The protagonist is a loathesome little priss. Austen herself says so in her letters. Fanny Price is neurotic and oversensitive where Austen's other heroines are brash and healthy. Even Austen's own family found the ending as odd and disappointing as do subsequent generations of readers.

So there's a puzzle to be solved here. The answer may lie in the fact that this book was written when, after a lifetime of obscurity, Austen found herself, briefly, a huge success. As is so often the case with writers, the success of her earlier book may have given her the courage to decided write about something that REALLY mattered to her--and what that was was her own very complex feelings about the intensely sexual appeal of a morally unworthy person.

This topic, the charm of the scoundrel, is one that flirts through all her other books, usually in a side plot. However, the constraints of Austen's day made it impossible for her to write the story of a woman who falls for a scoundrel with a sympathetic viewpoint character.

So what I think Austen may have decided to do was to write this story using Edmund--a male--as the sympathetic character who experiences the devastating sexual love of someone unworthy. Then, through a strange slight of hand, she gives us a decoy protagonist--Fanny Price, who if she is anything, is really the judgemental, punishing Joy Defeating inner voice--the inner voice that probably kept Jane from indulging her own very obvious interest in scoundrels in real life!

In defense of this theory, consider these points:

1. Jane herself loved family theatricals. Fanny's horror of them and of the flirting that took place is the sort of thing she made fun of in others. Jane also loved her cousin, Eliza, a married woman of the scoundrelly type, who flirted outrageously with Jane's brother Henry when Jane was young--very much like Mary Crawford. The fact is, and this bleeds through the book continuously, Austen doesn't at all like Fanny Price!

To make it more complex, Fanny's relationship with Henry Crawford is an echo of the Edmund-Mary theme, but Austen makes Henry so appealing that few readers have forgiven Austen for not letting Fanny liven up a little and marry him! No. Austen is trying to make a case for resisting temptation, but in this book she most egregiously fails.

2. Austen is famous for never showing us a scene or dialogue which she hadn't personally observed in real life, hence the off-stage proposals in her other books.

Does this not make it all the more curious that the final scene between Edmund and Mary Crawford in which he suffers his final disillusionment and realizes the depths of her moral decay comes to us with some very convincing dialogue? Is it possible that Jane lived out just such a scene herself? That she too was forced by her inner knowlege of what was right to turn away from a sexually appealing scoundrel of her own?

3. Fanny gets Edmund in the end, but it is a joyless ending for most readers because it is so clear that he is in love with Mary. Can it be that Austen here was suggesting the grim fate that awaits those who do turn away from temptations--a lifetime of listening to that dull, upstanding, morally correct but oh so joyless voice of reason?

We'll never know. Cassandra Austen burnt several years' worth of her sister's letters--letters written in the years before she prematurely donned her spinster's cap and gave up all thoughts of finding love herself. Her secrets whatever they were, were kept within the family.

But one has to wonder about what was really going on inside the curious teenaged girl who loved Samual Richardson's rape saga and wrote the sexually explicit oddity that comes to us as Lady Susan. Perhaps in Mansfield Park we get a dim echo of the trauma that turned the joyous outrageous rebel who penned Pride and Prejudice in her late teens into the staid, sad woman when she was dying wrote Persuasion--a novel about a recaptured young love.

So with that in mind, why not go and have another look at Mansfield Park!

Jane Austen is one of the best storytellers I have had the pleasure of reading. My favorite aspect of Austen's writing is her characterization; She acquaints the reader with her characters through the most ingenious and subtle techniques. My favorite denizen of Mansfield Park is the irritating and repulsive Mrs. Norris, who is a preeminent example of masterful characterization. For an illuminating artistic look at this novel read Vladimir Nabokov's wonderful and incomparable "Lectures on Literature", which includes a detailed study of "Mansfield Park"---don't miss it, it's a real treat.

While I have enjoyed other books by Austen, this one is unique among them in that the plot structure is, for the most part, quite complicated; and, what singles "Mansfield Park" out artistically is its style, as opposed to its story. Some passages are exceptional; for example, the scene where the main characters stroll about Sotherton Court approximates the scene at the county fair in Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" in its complexity, orchestration, and execution. Parts of "Mansfield Park" are simply exquisite.

Unfortunately, the denouement is something like a train wreck. The last 1/3-1/4 of the book is stylistically dull, though structurally sound, and the last twenty or so pages read like Cliff Notes. The ending should have been much longer in order to resolve the various, complicated elements of the plot with the stylistic grace of the first 2/3s of the novel. The uneven execution sets "Mansfield Park" a step below the best of Austen's (approximate) contemporaries (Flaubert and Dickens, for example), but "Mansfield Park" still makes the short list of my favorite novels.

I must admit that the first half of this book is somewhat slow and at times quite difficult to hold attention to. I understand that the setting, personalities, and situations must be established in the first half. Even so, the story is a gem well worth reading. It has quite a different feel from the other Jane Austen books and the characters stick to your mind as people you will never forget. A few characters are quite tragic yet do not deserve sympathy, which provides an interest in the reader's mind. Fanny Price, the main character of the book, is an admirable and intelligent person whom I would not mind modeling myself after. This is a GREAT book, so don't miss your chance to read it.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

MD is beyond all rating, far beyond. This is simply the greatest work of American fiction and one of the finest pieces of literature ever written. Of course, that said, it is not a simple read, a mere entertainment. It can best be compared to reading Dante's "Divine Comedy" or Milton's "Paradise Lost." You've got to get ready to take your time, think carefully, study a lot, read slowly and with the intent to savor, be humble and receptive. The prose is daunting, but Shakespearean in its greatness. No one short of the great Willy Shakes himself has approached the brilliance of Melville's poetic style. The novel is a quas-allegorical epic tragedy, if that makes much sense to those who haven't read it yet, and you must come to it ready to put yourself through such a monumental task as grappling with it. Ahab is the great madman pursuing his blasphemous goal, Ishmael the gentle searcher caught up in the terror and attractions of that purpose, and Moby himself the great mystery of evil and God and nature, "the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them til they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung". Hey, I could go on and on about this, about symbols and meaning and fate and evil and God and revenge and madness and hope. But what's the point? There are so many facets to this book, from farce to fate, that it would take me days to cover it all. If you want to read something great, this is what you should take in hand. By the way, the "message" of MD is extremely important in our day and age, in my opinion. This is not just an empty academic read, but a profound exploration of the meaning of life and the broadest, deepest questions of moral and spiritual purpose. The same themes haunted Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Camus, Satre, Becket, Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo -- the list could go on and on and on. But none of them reached as high as Melville in this work. You are welcome to write me to discuss MD any time, or to get pyshced up about reading it, or about unlocking some of its intricate and dense symbolism.

Set aboard a Mississippi side-wheel steamer in the 1850s, Melville's novel charts the progress of the American character at a time when the old frontier was giving way, albeit slowly, to a new, urban frontier.

"The Confidence-Man" works at so many different levels that it is no wonder Melville's readers weren't quite sure what to make of his ninth novel. It is a call-and-response of idealism suborned for the purposes of sheer humbuggery, material theft and moral sophistry.

I think readers would do well to always keep the word "confidence" in mind as they read the novel; it recurs time and again in different contexts throughout the book. Melville's purpose is to highlight the rift between what things seem to be and what they truly are. It is eerily existential in tone and readers familiar with Kierkegaard and Camus will be delighted by Melville's keen appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.

The wretched reception of "The Confidence-Man" undermined what little was left of Melville's own self-confidence as a writer whose work could support his family. In one sense, this was a grievous shame, because Melville lived for nearly four more decades and, presumably, could have spent that time producing more great literature had his contemporaries simply recognized the intellectual genius of his work.

In another sense, though, "The Confidence-Man" is a fitting send-off to a literary career hobbled by critical inattention and plain bad luck. Melville's America is not an America where dreams come true (note how China Aster is destroyed by his) and where confidence -- optimism -- is rewarded or even warranted. Yet, it is an America recognizably closer to the one we live in than those crafted by Melville's contemporaries -- Emerson, Thoreau, Irving.

"The Confidence-Man" is a very complex novel of ideas. This particular edition is very useful because it provides fairly thorough annotation throughout the book. I would highly recommend it for use in a graduate course on American intellectual history, particularly juxtaposed against Emerson and Tocqueville's analyses of American society and culture.

With "The Confidence-Man," Melville offered a final novelistic expression of his hopes, doubts, and frustrations about the American nation on the verge of Civil War in the late 1850's.

Many critics and reviewers take a negative point of view on this novel, saying that the narrative instability and episodic nature of the novel represents Melville's anger with the increasingly poor reception of his later novels, including the brilliant "Moby-Dick".

Over the course of the novel's first half, we are presented with a string of characters who spout the virtues of charity and trust, all supposedly different manifestations of one Confidence-Man. The confidence-man engages passengers of the riverboat Fidele from St. Louis to New Orleans in philosophical, literary, personal, and business-related conversations. This is the heart of the novel, even in the second half, where only one confidence-man appears. As in Cervantes' "Don Quixote," you are able to tease out more about the ambiguous purposes of the novel through speeches rather than actions.

At points amusing, horrifying, and sad, "The Confidence-Man" is difficult, if not impossible to categorize in any simple fashion. An extremely worthwhile read, especially if you read it as a prophetic work of the American Civil War and try to figure out for yourself if Melville thought things would turn out alright, or if the US was due for an apocalyptic judgment.

Quite an Original

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
I am specifically reviewing the Northwestern University Press edition of Melville's "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade."

There is a Norton Critical Edition of this novel edited by Hershel Parker, but it doesn't seem to be offered by Amazon.com. It is offered at at W.W. Norton's website... The Hendricks House edition edited by Elizabeth Foster is another good edition, but it seems to be out of print at the moment.

On November 12, 1856 Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne took a walk among the sandhills near Liverpool, England. They smoked cigars, and Hawthorne wrote about a week later that Melville spoke of Providence and futurity, and he, Melville, had pretty much made up his mind to be annilated.

"The Confidence-Man" is the last novel that Melville published during his lifetime. I agree with Newton Arvin, who called "The Confidence-Man" "one of the most infidel books ever written by an American; one of the most completely nihilistic, morally and metaphysically."

About 150 years after the book was first published, and about fifty since the book was first taken seriously by literary critics, The Confidence-Man is not a settled matter. In fact there remains excessive discord among readers and critics about the worth of this novel. Some compare it to Swift's "Tale of the Tub," others will tell you that this book is static and formless.

The idea is simple enough. On April 1 a devil in the guise of a deaf mute goes aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, and begs for charity. In rapid succession he transforms himself into a crippled Black man, a man with the weed, the man in the grey coat , the gentleman with the big book, the man with the plate and finally the Cosmopolitan. In these different guises he gulls and diddles people. He asks for trust. He is not always successful, but he can take solace in his failures. The reason for the devil's failures is the cyniscim, mistrust and mysandry of his marks. It is their human failings that accounts for his failures. And that's not so bad for the devil.

Melville's control of his material was never greater. I recommend the Northwestern Newberry edition because it contains draft fragments of chapter 14. You can see how carefullly Melville wrote this novel. The blandness of the prose is deliberate. If you read the surviving drafts you will see how Melville purposedly silenced and muted his message. Perhaps Melville was too successful for even close readers get lost sometimes.

At the end there is an increase of seriousness. An old man closes his Bible and asks for a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan hands the old man a chamberpot which appears to be full, and calls it a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan then extinguishes the lamp, and then leads the other into the darkness.

Seeking to reprise his earlier success with The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper went on to write several other tales built around his heroic character Natty Bumppo (called "Hawkeye" in Mohicans and "Pathfinder" in the book of THAT name). In this one our hero is known as "Deerslayer" for his facility on the hunt and is shown as the younger incarnation of that paragon of frontier virtue we got to know in the earlier books. In this one, too, we see how he got his most famous appellation: "Hawkeye". But, this time out, our hero comes across as woefully tiresome (perhaps it's because we see too much of him in this book, where he's almost a side character in Mohicans). Yet some of Cooper's writing skills seem sharper here (he no longer avers that Natty is the taciturn type, for instance, while having the fellow forever running off at the mouth). But, while there are some good moments & excitement, this tale really doesn't go all that far...and its rife with cliches already overworked from the earlier books. The worst part is the verbose, simple-minded self-righteousness of our hero, himself, taken to the point of absolute unbelievability. He spurns the love of a beautiful young woman (though he obviously admires her) for the forester's life (as though he couldn't really have both), yet we're expected to believe he's a full-blooded young American male. And he's insufferably "moral", a veritable goody two-shoes of the woodlands. At the same time, the Indians huff & puff a lot on the shore of the lake where Deerslayer finds himself in this tale (in alliance with a settler, his two daughters, a boorish fellow woodsman, and Deerslayer's own erstwhile but loyal Indian companion Chingachgook -- "The Big Sarpent," as Natty translates his name). But the native Americans seem ultimately unable to overwhelm the less numerous settlers who have taken refuge from them in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass (inside a frontier house built of logs and set in the lake bed on stilts). There is much racing around the lake as Deerslayer and the others strive to keep the few canoes in the vicinity from falling into the hands of the tribe of marauding Hurons who have stopped in the nearby woods on their way back up to Canada (fleeing the American colonists and the British at the outbreak of English-French hostilities -- since these Hurons are allied with the French). And there are lots of dramatic encounters, with some deaths, but the Indians seem to take it all with relative equanimity, while trying to find a way to get at the whites who are precariously ensconced out on the lake. (It seems to take them the better part of two days, for instance, to figure out they can build rafts to make up for their lack of canoes -- and why couldn't they just build their own canoes, in any case -- and how is it they don't have any along with them since it's obvious they'll have to cross a number of waterways to successfully make it back to the homeland in Canada?) The settler and the boorish woodsman, for their part, do their stupid best to attack the Indians unnecessarily, getting captured then ransomed in the process, while Deerslayer and Chingachgook contrive to get the loyal Indian's betrothed free from the Hurons (it seems she has been kidnapped by them -- the reason Deerslayer and Chingachgook are in the vicinity in the first place). In the meantime the simple-minded younger daughter of the settler (Cooper seems to like this motif since he used a strong daughter and a simpler sister in Mohicans, as well) wanders in and out of the Indian's encampment without sustaining any hurt on the grounds that the noble red men recognize the "special" nature of this poor afflicted young woman (Cooper used this motif in Mohicans, too). In the end there's lots of sturm und drang but not much of a tale -- at least not one which rings true or touches the right chords for the modern reader. Cooper tried to give us more of Hawkeye in keeping with what he thought his readers wanted but, in this case, more is definately too much. --- Stuart W. Mirsk

Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

"The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.