/lit/ - Literature

>>17094038
America's greatest written artists are novelists and short story writers, not poets. All our really good stuff is in prose, not verse.

Confidence Man, in its own way, is just as much "the Great American Novel" as Moby-Dick is. Both novels are depictions of core, central aspects of the American character. And both do it very well.

The neat thing about The Confidence Man is that it actually is as revelatory about America as Moby-Dick.

Moby-Dick and The Confidence Man, together, represent the twin halves of the American character.

>>16464625
Seconding The Confidence Man, it's actually as great of a novel as Moby-Dick, in its own way.

>>15550597
Confidence Man examines the merchant/swindler/huckster element in the American ethos, which has been there since the very beginning. The idea that everything is for sale, nothing is held fast, and there is no limit that cannot be crossed if there's a profit to be made. The title of the book itself refers to the main character, who is a "confidence man"--in other words, a con man.

>>15186243
I think it means that Melville has a very dim view of "American" ideas. He is in general extremely pessimistic about the American project, becoming steadily more so over the course of his career. Go read The Confidence Man, one of his other novels. It's a very black satire of the "American spirit."

What you must realize about Melville is that he hates the American Idea. Some people say that America has never produced a genuinely great writer. Other people respond to this by bringing up Melville, who IS genuinely great. But there is truth in both positions. Melville is great precisely because he rejects the central conceits of the United States. He rejects rule by the multitude. He rejects free enterprise and capitalism. He rejects the moral trappings of congregationalist Protestantism.

He rejects all of these, and sees them for the hollow deceptions they are. All of his great works--Moby-Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd, The Confidence Man--are critiques and criticisms of America's core ideas. This is why Melville is America's greatest writer. Because, paradoxically, he is not American at all. Not in his heart.

>writes the greatest novel ever written
>writes the greatest short story ever written

Euros are not allowed to give Americans shit. We have Melville and they do not.

The nifty thing about a thread mashing up Moby-Dick and Lovecraft--like this thread is doing--is that I've become 100% convinced that Moby-Dick is one of the direct inspirations for Lovecraft's work. Go read the Moby-Dick chapter "On the Whiteness of the Whale" and tell me it doesn't sound like it comes straight out of the Cthulhu mythos. Let's also not forget that Lovecraft was writing so much of his work in the 1920s, right at the height of the "Melville Revival" among literary scholarship. Melville is one of Lovecraft's direct predecessors, I am convinced of this.

All-time american champ of literature and good looks coming through

out of the fucking way

Both are mediocre.

>nobody's listed Melville yet

Come on, fuckers, this was an easy question to answer.

>>13190971
>typee
i wouldn't mind being raped by this devilishly handsome young man. he might not even try, considering all of the anal sex he surely had with toby in those caves.

where can i find a muscular polynesian man to sleep with (not sexual)

>>12168703
Here you go
>>12168714
Ebin

Whale meat.

>>8377820
this is so awful good god

what would melville say about this?

>>8115488
Melville seemed like a pretty alright guy desu. Real sad though.

>You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark good right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness ob de mout is not to swallar wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves.

Just what exactly did he mean by this?

>>7840760
Painfully wrong

How did he learn so much about whales?

>>7351871

dope

I AM A HUGE MELVILLE