L'uomo di fiducia

This is Herman Melville's last strange novel and it is obvious why, a very nebulous plot doesn't help. A Mississippi steamboat leisurely floating down the river, picking up and disembarking passengers along the way, from St. Louis to New Orleans in the antebellum south before the Civil War. Set on A Leggi tutto

An arduous read. I read 4 pages a day. Very tough going but I finished it. Only great admiration for the author pulled me through. Not recommended if you have not read his other works. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale , of course, but for something lighter try Typee and Omoo . Both are South Seas adventure st Leggi tutto

Short review: Complicated, dense, angry, and funny too (though in that depressing kind of way). Longer, more rambling comments and some quotes: If one is going to try and come up with some sort of definition of a "masterpiece" surely one of the criteria must be an almost permanent relevance - that s Leggi tutto

The Confidence Man is a very cryptic book. Poorly received during its time and was the last book he published in his lifetime. It is part morality play, part theatre, part absurd - it is very hard to label in fact. At the beginning, the revolving characters reminded me of Chaucer's Tales (a possible Leggi tutto

...what is this novel? is it a novel? is it a collection of vignettes? is there a plot? honestly, who knows? Following up the critical failure of Moby-Dick , Melville decided to pen his final novel, The Confidence-Man . I'm not even sure if I can give a plot summary here. It's set on a steamboat on the Leggi tutto