He seems to be creating a boomlet of reinterest in Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man. I’ve wanted to read it for years. I mean, how great is Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, and Billy Budd? A country that could produce Melville, Hawthorne, and James has every right to call itself literate.
I went to nypl.org to put Confidence Man on hold–and three of the four copies were checked out!