1. "Herman Melvilles "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade," the last novel he published in his lifetime, which met with scathing and uncomprehending reviews, plays around with this theme. Its a disorienting string of loosely connected scenes, tracking the schemes of a shapeshifting trickster aboard a Mississippi steamboat who solicits his fellow passengers through a variety of pitches, always insisting on the need for confidence in the goodness of the world.."
Prose and Cons: On Melville?s ?The Confidence-Man? | Zack Friedman | The Hypocrite Reader
a. His idea probably came from an 1849 story in the New York Herald, in which a respectable looking guy talked people into lending him their pocket watches, and, of course neither he nor the watch were seen again.
This sort of 'confidence man' element, it seemed to him, was a major part of the American character.
2. On the other hand, there was Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, whose "Letters from an American Farmer" (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities for peace, wealth, and pride in America....
Crèvecoeur enthusiastically praised the colonies for their industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America as an agrarian paradise -- a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many other writers up to the present.
"What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations....Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause changes in the world." Hector St. John de Crevecoeur < Authors < Literature 1991 < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond
3. Both suggest Americas as a sort of 'hustler,' one in the negative, and the other, in the positive sense. And what has allowed them to exercise that character is that "Americans have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul or fair means, than any other people in history. In Europe and elsewhere the privilege of manipulating the system to one's advantage was either reserved to elite or severely constrained: the wily peasant could not go far." "Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828," Walter A. McDougall, p. 5.
4. Melville may be correct about some Americans being scofflaws, frauds, and 'confidence men,'....but they are also hustlers in the positive sense:
... "[t]he creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years" and that its founding "explains the shape of modern history more than anything else" (xi-xii). Most provocatively, [Walter] McDougall claims that America has always been, to use his term, a land of "hustlers." While he admits that the word typically conveys a negative stereotype, McDougall points out that Americans "are also hustlers in the positive sense: builders, doers, go-getters, dreamers, hard workers, inventors, organizers, engineers, and a people supremely generous..." https://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/264/
5. Americans came to believe early in colonial times- and the belief was redoubled at various points in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries- that the ordered liberty they uniquely enjoyed naturally bred prosperity and reform, which in turn bred more liberty, which someday they would export to the world." McDougall, Op.Cit. p. 7.
Prose and Cons: On Melville?s ?The Confidence-Man? | Zack Friedman | The Hypocrite Reader
a. His idea probably came from an 1849 story in the New York Herald, in which a respectable looking guy talked people into lending him their pocket watches, and, of course neither he nor the watch were seen again.
This sort of 'confidence man' element, it seemed to him, was a major part of the American character.
2. On the other hand, there was Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, whose "Letters from an American Farmer" (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities for peace, wealth, and pride in America....
Crèvecoeur enthusiastically praised the colonies for their industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America as an agrarian paradise -- a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many other writers up to the present.
"What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations....Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause changes in the world." Hector St. John de Crevecoeur < Authors < Literature 1991 < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond
3. Both suggest Americas as a sort of 'hustler,' one in the negative, and the other, in the positive sense. And what has allowed them to exercise that character is that "Americans have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul or fair means, than any other people in history. In Europe and elsewhere the privilege of manipulating the system to one's advantage was either reserved to elite or severely constrained: the wily peasant could not go far." "Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828," Walter A. McDougall, p. 5.
4. Melville may be correct about some Americans being scofflaws, frauds, and 'confidence men,'....but they are also hustlers in the positive sense:
... "[t]he creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years" and that its founding "explains the shape of modern history more than anything else" (xi-xii). Most provocatively, [Walter] McDougall claims that America has always been, to use his term, a land of "hustlers." While he admits that the word typically conveys a negative stereotype, McDougall points out that Americans "are also hustlers in the positive sense: builders, doers, go-getters, dreamers, hard workers, inventors, organizers, engineers, and a people supremely generous..." https://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/264/
5. Americans came to believe early in colonial times- and the belief was redoubled at various points in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries- that the ordered liberty they uniquely enjoyed naturally bred prosperity and reform, which in turn bred more liberty, which someday they would export to the world." McDougall, Op.Cit. p. 7.
