One of the weirdest novels ever written

Herman Melville's The Confidence Man continues as one of the weirdest and most challenging novels ever written, and it's hard to imagine how it was received in the 1850s when first published. Reading farther in last night, some general themes become clear: the eponymous Confidence Man appears in many guises, but what he has consistently is an insinuous nature, forcing himself into confrontations with other travellers on the Mississppi river steam (the Fidele). In each case he puts the fellow passenger off guard, then brings conversation around to an issue of trust or "charity," generally talking about the lack of charity and of human feelings of empathy, then "conning" the mark out of some money. In 3 chapters read last night he, first, comes upon a stranger and convinces him somehow that they knew each other from way back and, though the stranger has no recollection at all, he persuades the man that he must have had an episode of amnesia. In another, he comes across a young man reading Latin history (Tacitus) and argues that such reading is depressing and morally dangerous. Third scene, even more strange and complicated, he vouches for the black man who had appeared earlier in the novel, but here the CM appears to be in two guises: one who doubts the veracity of the black man (claims he is a white man pretending to be a beggar) and another defending the black man (who has supposedly left the ship by this point) and in the process conning some passengers fora  donation to an obviously bogus charity, the Seminole Widow and Orphan Fund. The novel is so obviously full of darkness and bitterness - much more than Twain at his most cynical - and no doubt in part Melville's reaction to his many misfortunes and loss of fame and readership as his work became increasingly odd, unconventional, distinct or even unique, ahead of its time, and, at least in one instance, brilliant.