Melville's Confidence Man: From Knave to Knight by Tom Quirk (review)

Book Reviews103 other parts of the book, Norris's position appears informed, but several difficult points need clear and specific explanations. The chapter on the American deconstructionists is similarly frustrating — not because Norris neglects to develop his points, but because he refuses to do so. Although he outlines very well the position of Paul de Man (again, for better or worse, mainly concentratingon one key text: Allegories of Reading), Norris dismisses Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller much too easily as practicing "deconstruction on the wild side." Instead of probing the works of these two important critics to discover what value they may have, Norris actively seeks to set up an opposition between the early, rigorous writings of Derrida and the later, "dizzy and exuberant" work of the Americans — an opposition that deconstruction would disallow. The book's final chapter, "Dissenting Voices," is its weakest segment. Basically, Norris sets up a few straw men (literary critics who are out of fashion) and obliterates them without delving into their arguments in any depth. Although he devotes a few pages to Wittgenstein, Norris fails to adequately come to terms with this important philosopher who may very well be deconstruction's most devastating opponent. Despite its faults, Norris's book remains a valuable introduction to deconstructive theory. Especially worthwhile is the annotated bibliography. Though it is not a replacement for the writings of Derrida and others, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice becomes a clear and useful guide to consult before submerging oneself in the "primary texts." Although Norris could be faulted for not fully explaining all of his points, his project is ambitious and admirable. RONALD D. MORRISON University of Kansas Tom Quirk. Melville's Confidence Man: From Knave to Knight. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982. 174p. It is not surprising, in view of the tenth anniversary of Watergate occurring last year, that the decade has evidenced a growing fascination with the confidence man and his nefarious game. Three major studies have appeared in the last eight years: Warwick Wadlington's The Confidence Game in American Literature (Princeton, 1975), John G. Blair's The Confidence Man in Modern Fiction (Barnes and Noble, 1979), and Gary Lindberg's The Confidence Man in American Literature (Oxford, 1982). Each of these studies begins with a consideration of the seminal work which is now the subject of the publication of its first book-length study: Melville's intriguing last novel, The Confidence Man (1857). The author argues that Melville's novel progresses from bitter satire to deeply felt human sympathy, the archetypal protagonist from simple knave to knighterrant of confidence. He begins (citing extensively from an unpublished dissertation) by discussing the apparent source of the novel and origin of the phrase "confidence man" — a diddler who was apprehended in New York City in 1849, reemerging in 1855. An attempt is made to identify in the novel a single dominant character with eight separate masquerades. Subsequent chapters discuss "literary models" (Milton, Shakespeare, and Cervantes), "the personal elements" (focusing on the five interpolated stories), and what the author calls "Melville's problem of belief" (considering the novel in terms of Northrop Frye's "anatomy" or "Menippean satire"). 104ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW The study is flawed by a disturbing repetitiousness, by some equivocation or semantic legerdemain (for example in the meaning of the phrase "confidence man" and use of the phrase "unwitting confidence man" applied to Egbert and Mark Winsome, along with such confusions as this statement: "This does not mean that [Melville's confidence man] was modeled on [Milton's Satan]" in a chapter entitled "Literary Models"), and by some tenuous arguments (for example that Melville adapted the confidence man's masquerades according to St. Paul's list of spiritual gifts in I Corinthians 12 — with "inconsistencies" being dismissed as evidence of Melville's "flexible" imagination). The book's appearance is enhanced by seven reproductions of George Caleb Bingham's drawings of frontier types. D. G. KEHL Arizona State University Robert Scholes. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. 161p. The amount and quality of studies in literary theory appearing with American university press imprints recently is truly impressive. New books by Paul De Man, Jonathan Culler, Fredric...