How should the cosmopolitan's puzzlement over Autolycus be understood, then? To answer this question, it is crucial to recognize that Goodman often make statements where it is unclear whether he means what he says or is lying through his teeth, but where the novel obviously intends what has been said to be understood in an ironic manner. The best example of such an utterance is his comment to Pitch that "irony is so unjust; never could abide irony; something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony, and Satire, his bosom friend" (*CM* 136). Perhaps he means it, and perhaps he does not, but the novel—ironic and satirical through and through—surely does not. Goodman's reflections on Autolycus can be read in a similar manner, uttered as it is by someone who undoubtedly has many parasitic traits in common with the character in question; in Tom Quirk's words the cosmopolitan "might just as well have been talking about himself" (*Melville's* 88). Himself part trickster, part jester and part parasite, as well as full of "comic energies" similar to those that make it so hard to judge Shakespeare's rogue, it is surely one of the novel's great ironies that Melville has Goodman doubt the possibility of the existence of someone "thus wicked and thus happy," not to forget the irony of him finding his "sole consolation … in the fact that no such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which evoked

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him." Through the references to Autolycus, *The Confidence-Man* is thus slyly providing further means of understanding the cosmopolitan's parasitic traits.

Just as the figure of the parasite helps illuminate Goodman's reflections on Autolycus, it is also relevant for understanding another important literary reference in the novel. In Chapter 43, the *Fidèle*'s barber, William Cream, encounters the cosmopolitan, whom he ends up shaving, only to find himself tricked out of his payment.231 During their conversation, Cream at one point quotes the book alternatively known as Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach to explain why he once refused to offer a free shave to a sweet-voiced man who claimed to be his distant relative: "I recalled what the son of Sirach says in the True Book: 'An enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips;' and so I did what the son of Sirach advises in such cases: 'I believed not his many words'" (*CM* 236). Goodman claims he has never come across these specific passages in the Bible. Finding it hard to believe that the Good Book should contain such cynical advice, he resolves to look it up for himself.

The last chapter of *The Confidence-Man*—"The Cosmopolitan increases in seriousness"—opens with Goodman's attempt to clear up the matter. Entering the cabin, he finds most of the passengers sleeping in their berths, while under the room's single burning lamp, an old man is quietly reading the Bible. After Goodman has a chance to inspect it for himself, the narrator describes how his expression turns from "attentiveness" to "seriousness," and, finally, to "a kind of pain," before asking whether his companion can help him resolve "a disturbing doubt," which is like "gall and wormwood" to him, as a philanthropist:

I am one who thinks well of man. I love man. I have confidence in man. But what was told me not a half-hour since? I was told that I would find it written— "Believe not his many words—an enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips"—and also I was told that I would find a good deal more to the same effect, and all in this book. I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself, what do

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231 Scholars often hold the barber to be an innocent dupe, but Tom Quirk has argued that he, too, is a confidence man of sorts, and that the dialogue between him and Goodman "is a tissue of misunderstandings and double meaning, the wit of which largely derives from a punning with underworld jargon" (*Melville's* 143).

I read? Not only just what was quoted, but also, as was engaged, more to the same purpose, such as this: "With much communication he will tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair, and say What wantest thou? If thou be for his profit he will use thee; he will make thee bare, and will not be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed. When thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep." (*CM* 242)

At this point, someone kept awake by their conversation interrupts them with the following question: "Who's that describing the confidence-man?" (*CM* 242)—the title aside, this is the only time the term "confidence-man" is used in the novel. Goodman is then reassured when the old gentleman points out that Ecclesiasticus is not recognized as a canonical part of the Bible, but that, along with the other apocryphal texts, it has been included between the Old and the New Testament in the copy found aboard the *Fidèle*. 232

At first glance, the verses from Ecclesiasticus quoted first by William Cream and then by the cosmopolitan, might seem to support the "standard line" argument. Ecclus. 12.16 reads as follows: "An enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he imagineth how to throw thee into a pit: he will weep with his eyes, but if he find opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood." No less diabolical-sounding are the following quotes: "If he have need of thee, he will deceive thee, and smile upon thee, and put thee in hope; he will speak to thee fair, and say, What wantest thou?" (Ecclus. 13.6); "Affect not to be made equal unto him in talk, and believe not his many words: for with much communication will he tempt thee, and smiling upon thee will get out thy secrets" (Ecclus. 13.11); and

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232 The apocryphal texts were also included between the Old and the New Testament in Melville's own, heavily annotated 1846 edition of *The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments, Translated out of the Original Tongues, and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, with References and Various Readings, together with the Apocrypha*. All quotes from Ecclesiasticus are taken from this edition. The old man's claim about the official status of Ecclesiasticus is not entirely precise. As a deuterocanonical text (i.e. belonging to the second canon), it is considered canonical by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, but not by Protestants. Therefore, it is a fundamentally problematic book; as Mark C. Taylor has put it: "for thoughtful readers, the apocryphal is uncontainable; the margin inevitably overflows its bounds and contaminates the whole book as if from within. The history of the Apocrypha shows the undeniable arbitrariness of the text: sometimes included, sometimes excluded, sometimes included as excluded" (613).

"Observe, and take good heed, for thou walkest in peril of thy overthrowing: when thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep" (Ecclus. 13.13).

Ecclesiasticus was written in Hebrew, probably in Jerusalem around 180 BC by the scribe Joshua or Jesus ben Sirach, sometimes referred to as Ben Sira. As these quotes indicate, he is trying to warn his readers against what he holds to be a grave danger, but what sort of danger exactly? Initially, one might think that he must be referring to the Devil. In a similar vein, Gail Coffler has argued that the passage Goodman quotes "might describe Satan, or perhaps the Cosmopolitan, or, Melville devilishly hints, it might refer to the false promise of the gospels, the 'good news' of Christianity" (66–67). Nevertheless, when the quotes are read in their original context—as did Melville, who had marked several passages from Ecclesiasticus in his Bible (Heidmann 385)—it turns out that ben Sirach has something wholly other in mind. An indication of just what is found in Ecclus. 13.4–5, which Goodman also partially quotes: "If thou be for his profit, he will use thee: but if thou have nothing, he will forsake thee. If thou have any thing, he will live with thee: yea, he will make the bare, and will not be sorry for it." Here it becomes obvious that ben Sirach is *not* talking about how man should avoid eternal damnation in the afterlife, but about how to succeed *here and now*, while on earth. More precisely, the danger he is addressing is exactly the one that befell Timon of Athens: being taken advantage of by false friends. If there is one creature known for living off his host if there is something to be gained by doing so, but who will desert his benefactor the moment the latter is "bare"—just like Kooloo deserted the narrator in *Omoo*—it is none other than the parasite.

As Seth Schwartz has argued in *Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society?* (2009), for all its religious content, large parts of Ecclesiasticus including both chapters quoted in *The Confidence-Man—*are almost wholly concerned with worldly matters. More specifically, he notes that it contains an abundance of practical "advice on relations to one's fellows, including friends, social superiors, hosts, guests or parasites (dining figures prominently in the book), dependents, family members, slaves, and women; reciprocity is a near-constant theme, and gift exchange is mentioned frequently" (Schwartz 48).

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In addition, Schwartz has the following to say about ben Sirach's specific aims in Chapter 13 of Ecclesiasticus, where most of the quotes in *The Confidence-Man* are taken from:

In chapter 13 … he warns his audience against falling into a state of dependency on the wealthy without any allusion to Pentateuchal norms or much significant use of biblical language … In sum, Ben Sira here offers advice, based on a keen sense of its inherent danger, about the proper management of a social institution he did not yet have a separate name for but that following Roman precedent, we could call patronage. (69)233

One thing that should be clear by now, is that where there is such an institution as patronage, those trying to sponge off its benefits will always be close at hand. In the chapters quoted in *The Confidence-Man*, ben Sirach is thus *not* warning his readers against the Devil, but against exactly the type of false and flattering friends that were labeled parasites in the Greco-Roman tradition. As someone who incorporates many of the traits typically associated with the classical parasite, it is no wonder that Goodman takes offence at finding such words in the Bible, or that he rejoices when learning that Ecclesiasticus can be dismissed, due to its non-canonical status. As he remarks to his companion:

I cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man. (*CM* 243)

Nor, perhaps, has he ever read anything so calculated to make a parasite go hungry, at least if its message were taken to heart by the reader. The irony is that the gist of ben Sirach's warning to his readers is almost

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233 Worth quoting is also Schwartz' reflections on ben Sirach's warning of what will happen to those ignorant of the rules of gift exchange: Such a man has no real friends, only "parasites, people who eat at his table but are no true friends, whom he holds in contempt because they fail to reciprocate his benefits in a way he deems appropriate, while the parasites, for their part … repay his abuse with raw hatred" (69).

identical to one of the main points of Polonius's advice to Laertes in *Hamlet*: Beware of false friends trying to sponge off you. The strong reactions of Goodman against Ecclesiasticus and Noble against Polonius can therefore be read as having their origins in a fear known to all parasites throughout history, namely that of being cut off from their nourishment.

### **The "Noise" of** *The Confidence-Man*

To return to Snyder and Mitchell's analysis, the combination of the highly normative ideals of antebellum America and the new charity industry ended up excluding those perceived as nonproductive in a new and more dehumanizing manner than had previously been the case. As they see it, the portrayal of disability in Melville's novel counteracts this tendency because it exposes the violence at the heart of societal attempts to cope with such "parasitic" foreign bodies; in their words: "The radicality of *The Confidence-Man* is found not in its social vision of a more inclusive society, but rather in its anticipation of new forms of social violence" (*Cultural Locations* 65). This leads Snyder and Mitchell to discuss the narrator's reflections in the three chapters where he directly addresses the reader. To them, his is a far-reaching vision that aims to reflect life in its multiplicity, including the disabled that the charity industry attempts to speak *for*, all the while keeping them safely out of the public's view:

By thwarting charity's efforts to keep disability under wraps and out of the public eye, *The Confidence-Man* creates the interference that upsets bodily appearances as a reliable medium of interpretation. In this way the tactics of Melville's writing hinge on the deformation of aesthetics as a significant register for literary innovation. (*Cultural Locations* 67)

In this final section of the chapter, my aim is to further explore Snyder and Mitchell's idea that *The Confidence-Man* creates some sort of "interference" through a deformation of aesthetics. However, whereas they seem primarily to think of this in the sense of the narrator's willingness to portray what falls outside the purview of "normality"—that is, the disabled body—this is not what I have in mind. To me, the most important question is how to describe the enduring strangeness of Melville's novel.

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Whereas the thematic level is no doubt of importance for any attempt to answer this question, the crucial thing in this regard is *how* the narrator tells his story—in other words, the question of literary form.

To approach this question, I would like to begin by quoting a point made by Wai-chee Dimock in *Empire for Liberty* (1989). As she sees it,

speech in *The Confidence-Man* has almost nothing to do with speakers: it is an autonomous phenomenon, not a communicative device. … From the first scene till the last, disembodied voices are made to deliver oblique comments on the action of the story. All in all, we have the eerie sense that speech imposes itself on a character—rather than issuing from him—and that in the long run, it makes little difference who this character is. Characters are interchangeable. They are no more than the medium in which words circulate. (207–8)234

If Dimock's assessment is valid, as I think it to a large degree is, understanding this seeming lack of connection between the characters of the novel and their various utterances is necessary for coming to terms with the strangeness of *The Confidence-Man*. Now, what all the confidence men aboard the *Fidèle* have in common is their tool of choice: *words*. With the exception of the deaf-mute and his written words, they more specifically employ what Pitch terms "the crafty process of sociable chat" (*CM* 130)—an activity that in *White-Jacket* is claimed to be absolutely fundamental to Americans: "For chat man must; and by our immortal Bill of Rights, that guarantees to us liberty of speech, chat we Yankees will" (*WJ* 386). Whether the confidence men make promises (usually of a kind too good to be true) in return for a small investment; whether they offer sad stories of woe, meant to tweak their interlocutors' heartstrings, and open their purses; whether they try to manipulate their insecurities, fears, hopes, self-esteem, sense of charity, or their confidence—they do so through a constant stream of talk. Or as Pitch puts it, when he accuses the P.I.O. man of being "a talking man—what I call a wordy man. You talk,

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234 See also Dimock's claim that "[p]eople do not use words [to tell the stories]; words use them. The receding authorship in the … stories makes it impossible to say just who the storytellers are and in the long run, it does not matter. The discrete segregation and mutual imperviousness between speech and speaker make words utterly free, utterly unaccountable. They go nowhere, illustrate nothing, and refer to nothing but themselves" (*Empire* 209).

talk" (*CM* 125). Thus, as Warwick Wadlington has noted, Melville's novel truly gives "the impression of being stuffed with words" (140).

Hence, *The Confidence-Man* is a fundamentally *noisy* novel, filled with chatter that sometimes seems to border on the meaningless.235 The book is to a large degree made up of conversations between "nonsensical people talking nonsense," as one contemporary reviewer put it (qtd. in *CM* 325), and the passengers are also said to constantly "buzz" on the *Fidèle*'s "decks, while, from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb" (*CM* 8). To understand its peculiar effect, then, this noisy wordiness must be analyzed. This brings me to one scholar who has addressed these specific questions, the previously mentioned Alexander Gelley. His "Parasitic Talk" and "Melville's Talking Man" deploy Serres' concept of the parasite to analyze Melville's novel.236 Central to both these texts is Martin Heidegger's concept of *Gerede*, or "idle talk," which Gelley uses to situate *The Confidence-Man* as part of an alternative literary lineage:

The Confidence-Man may be placed in a line of modern novels—including *Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, The Pickwick Papers, L'Éducation sentimentale, Bouvard et Péuchet, Der Stechlin*, and *Ulysses*—that could be termed novels of idle talk, of Gerede. They are works whose sustaining principle, their red thread, is neither the action nor a central protagonist but rather a principle of discourse [that] can be shown, in each case, to manifest a continuous, cumulative pattern. ("Parasitic Talk" 88–89)237

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235 A central premise for Michel Serres' argument, is the fact that the word parasite in French refers not only to sponging among humans and in nature, but also to *noise*, as in the expression "bruit parasite" (static, distortion, or white noise). Drawing on the way information theory understands noise as anything that interferes with successful communication, in *The Parasite*, he constantly weaves these three meanings together. On this third meaning of the concept, as well as the importance of information theory to Serres' thought, see Harari and Bell (xxii–xxviii), Paulson (53–100), and S. Brown (7–8).

236 Gelley's texts have unfortunately not elicited much response from Melville scholars. One important exception is Sianne Ngai, whose chapter on "tone" in *Ugly Feelings* (2005) draws upon his contributions as part of an original reading of *The Confidence-Man*. While I support Gelley's general conclusions, I do not agree with him when it comes to all details. For example, he states that when Noble and Goodman are drinking port wine, "each repeatedly urges the other to drink, while at the same time maintaining considerable reserve regarding the wine" ("Parasitic Talk" 96). As earlier indicated, this only holds for Noble, not Goodman.

237 As Gelley makes clear, the negative implications of the expression notwithstanding, for Heidegger, *Gerede* is not to be understood as referring to a failure of communication: "The expression 'idle talk' is not to be used here in a 'disparaging' signification. Terminologically,

The constitutive traits of this principle of discourse are easier to discern in a later text where Gelley approached similar questions without reference to Melville: "Idle Talk: Scarcity and Excess in Literary Language" (2001). Here he analyzes works by Louis-René des Forêts and Henry James to highlight how spoken utterances in narratives may be crucial, even when no specific information is conveyed:

What I am looking for are instances where there is a hollowing out of *what* is said, but the act of talking remains. One way to focus on this issue is to pay particular attention to language that is deemed low, formulaic, or "empty"—gossip, chatter, prattle, *idiotismes*. It is this kind of inadvertence in language that I think of as speech in an "idling" state. ("Idle Talk" 30)

That is to say, the central question Gelley is addressing is what it means when language "happens" in works of literature, but without having an obvious meaning. Or, as he has also written: "When language is idling, it is still running, like a motor in neutral. It goes nowhere, we say, which means that we haven't yet found a way to make sense of its noise" ("Talking Man" 249).

One way to make sense of the unwonted wordiness of *The Confidence-Man* would therefore be through interrogating its peculiar form of noisy "idling." To offer a tentative initial analysis of this aspect, the various utterances made by the different con men can never be taken at face value. There is no way of knowing when they are telling the truth (if at all), and when they are not, or of separating their truths from their lies. What is important about the conversations in the novel is not so much *what* is said at any given moment—when the cosmopolitan at one point asks Noble what they should talk about, the latter's reply is fitting: "Oh, anything you please" (*CM* 181). Substituting "Confidence" for "Leviathanisms" in the following quote from Ishmael would therefore supply a good description of the status of the words uttered aboard the *Fidèle*: We "can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanisms, but signifying nothing" (*MD* 145).

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it signifies a positive phenomenon which constitutes the kind of Being of everyday Dasein's understanding and interpreting" (Heidegger qtd. in "Parasitic Talk" 87).

Instead, three other aspects should be highlighted. The first is the simple fact that words are continually being uttered. This is not only for existential reasons, since "the skills of the confidence man always require a partner" (Gelley, "Talking Man" 256), but also for utterly pragmatic ones, since a lull in the conversation would mean a chance for the intended victim to get away. The second is that regardless of their truth-value, these words that are uttered have effects; as Gary Lindberg has claimed: "Throughout his novel Melville urges us to distinguish between the truth of a statement and the effects of it" (18). Put differently, everything that is said is meant to ensure that the intended victim ends up and remains in the position of the host. The third is that this aim must remain hidden from those being addressed: Tricking people who suspect that they are being conned is obviously much more difficult than duping the unsuspecting ones.238 This means that "idle talk," as Gelley sees it, "is both pervasive and unnoticed," or at least "nearly unnoticed" ("Parasitic Talk" 99–100). To him, what circulates in the novel "is idle talk, talk that systematically conceals what it means. … It is not in the content, the referential element, but in the process, the discourse itself that the narrative dynamic is concentrated" ("Talking Man" 250, 253).

To conceptualize this defining function of language in *The Confidence-Man*, Gelley refers to communicative circuits:

In this novel Melville undertakes to foreground the dialogic situation itself while underspecifying the narrative posts or agencies. In terms of the communicative circuit … we may note a radical instability in all three narrative posts, that of sender, receptor, and referent. The referent or subject matter is a reiterated appeal for "confidence" (or one of its analogues like "charity" or "trust"). But this notion is no more than a lure, a concept emptied from the start so as to serve as a means of manipulation. The receptor is inconsequential in terms of personality or individuality but interesting only insofar as he is more or less of a

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238 This, however, does not mean that it is impossible—to some, it might even be an opportunity. Neil Harris has for example argued that P. T. Barnum was so successful because he mastered the art of exposing his own cons: "Barnum … and other hoaxers didn't fear public suspicion; they invited it. They understood … that the opportunity to debate the *issue* of falsity, to discover how deception had been practiced, was even more exciting than the discovery of fraud itself. … when people paid to see frauds, thinking they were true, they paid again to hear how the frauds were committed" (77; emphasis in the original).

dupe …. The sender, finally, the confidence-man figure, is by no means a stable, consistently successful master of the game. ("Parasitic Talk" 89)

If sender, receptor, and referent are all thus tainted with a "radical instability," how does this affect the readers' understanding of the novel's various communicative circuits? As Gelley argues, one possible answer is that it redirects our attention to the "problematic nature of the channel" the message passes through—that is, toward the precarious state of the very words being uttered ("Parasitic Talk" 90). This might be understood in light of Roman Jakobson's concept of *phatic speech* or *communion*, which basically communicates a readiness to communicate, as when people ask "How are you?" or when they clear their throats to get someone's attention.239 In Bernhard Siegert's words: "'Phatic communion,' … denotes a linguistic function in the course of which words are not used to coordinate actions, and certainly not to express thoughts, but in which a community is constituted by means of exchanging meaningless utterances" (34). Usually such "meaningless" utterances are just one of many necessary ingredients for successful communication. However, since it is impossible to know whether the words uttered in *The Confidence-Man* have a deeper meaning at all, or whether they are simply intended to keep the channel of communication operative, it is as if they are threatening to completely take over, potentially turning Melville's novel into one extended phatic speech act.

This is where Serres' concept of the parasite becomes relevant; positing two people talking to each other, Gelley makes the following claim:

Such a dual or specular communicative model constitutes a closed system and assumes the possibility of maximal communication, of a nearly perfect transmission between two poles. But such an exchange would also be tautological, since the model ignores a basic factor in any communication, the channel of transmission. In order to complete the model we need to posit an agency capable of accounting for the resistance inherent in the medium of transmission. Such an agency may be conceived as operating either through force, through a violent intervention in the system, or through a tactical maneuver that would

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239 On the phatic function, see Jakobson (18–51).

arouse minimal resistance and yet still modify or transform it. The parasite is such a mobile agent … It is the tactician of the quotidian. It saps, not combats, the system that serves as its host. ("Parasitic Talk" 91–92)

Rather than resort to violence, which would mean to draw unwanted attention to itself, the parasite intercepts the relations of others, transforming them to divert nourishment in its own direction; as Serres puts it in order to explain why goods do not always arrive where they should: "There are always intercepters who work very hard to divert what is carried along these paths. Parasitism is the name most often given to these numerous and diverse activities, and I fear that they are the most common thing in the world" (*Parasite* 11). At least, such activities are surely the most common thing in the floating world of *The Confidence-Man*. No less than the characters he describes, Melville's narrator is someone who intercepts and latches onto relations, in his case through constantly diverting, problematizing, and undermining the meaning of his narrative. To take a closer look at his role, it is crucial to turn to the novel's many interpolated stories, as well as at the three chapters where he directly addresses his readers about the nature of literature.

*The Confidence-Man* contains five longer embedded narratives, as well as several shorter tales told by different characters to their interlocutors.240 While many of these stories are concerned with various types of misfortune, there is little in terms of direct content to tie them all together, nor is it always easy to understand exactly why they are told and what they are supposed to mean. Might there be a different sort of red thread connecting them, one that has more to do with their function within the novel than with their explicit subject matter? To answer this question, one might begin by inquiring into who narrates them. The first major story is originally brought to the reader's attention in Chapter 4, after John Ringman has tricked the merchant, Henry Roberts, into

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240 The five longer tales concern the evil Goneril (in Chapter 12); the crippled Thomas Fry (19); Colonel John Moredock, the "Indian-hater" (25–27); Charlemont, the gentleman-madman (34); and the ruined candle-maker China Aster (40). The shorter narratives include the tale of the man who refused to think his wife was unfaithful (6); that of the moral old woman of Goshen who did not drink alcohol (24); as well as a poetical eulogy of the press (30).

thinking him an old acquaintance. After having asked the latter whether he, too, is a freemason, and whether he would loan money to a brother in need, Ringman proceeds to tell his story: "In a low, half-suppressed tone, he began it. Judging from his auditor's expression, it seemed to be a tale of singular interest, involving calamities against which no integrity, no forethought, no energy, no genius, no piety, could guard" (*CM* 21). Even though the reader at this juncture has no idea what this "tale of singular interest" is about, it evidently leads to what Ringman had been hoping for:

At every disclosure, the hearer's commiseration increased. No sentimental pity. As the story went on, he drew from his wallet a bank note, but after a while, at some still more unhappy revelation, changed it for another, probably of a somewhat larger amount; which, when the story was concluded, with an air studiously disclamatory of alms-giving, he put into the stranger's hand; who, on his side, with an air studiously disclamatory of alms-taking, put it into his pocket. (*CM* 21)

Put differently, the performative effects of the story—Roberts making not only a donation, but a larger one than he had originally intended—are made familiar before its subject matter. In fact, it is only in Chapter 12 that its sad (but probably false) content is revealed, concerning Ringman and his evil wife, Goneril, who takes his daughter away from him, ruins him and tries to have him committed to a lunatic asylum. What deserves mention is who is doing the telling. The immediate cause of the narration is a disagreement between Roberts and John Truman, the agent from the Black Rapids Coal Company, from whom he has just bought what is likely bogus stock. Whereas the agent holds that misfortune in life is probably deserved and that those who observe the suffering of others tend to overrate its severity, the merchant is more charitably inclined. To argue his case, he first mentions a sick, old miser he has seen aboard (whom Truman will proceed to trick out of \$100 in Chapter 15, and the herbdoctor will convince to buy a box of his "Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator" in Chapter 20), then Black Guinea, but neither example changes his companion's opinion about the reality of suffering. Finally, he mentions Ringman's sad story:

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Foiled again, the good merchant would not desist, but ventured still a third case, that of the man with the weed, whose story, as narrated by himself, and confirmed and filled out by the testimony of a certain man in a gray coat, whom the merchant had afterwards met, he now proceeded to give; and that, without holding back those particulars disclosed by the second informant, but which delicacy had prevented the unfortunate man himself from touching upon.

But as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better justice to the man than the story, we shall venture to tell it in other words than his, though not to any other effect. (*CM* 59)

In Chapter 12 readers are thus presented with a story first told by someone who corresponds to the first gentleman on Black Guinea's list (Ringman) to Roberts in Chapter 4; then "confirmed and filled out" by someone who corresponds to the second person on the list (the man in gray); then retold by the merchant to someone who corresponds to the third person on the list (Truman); but where the narrator, who does not feel that Roberts does the story justice, finally proceeds to tell it in "other words than his, though not to any other effect." For this reason, assigning ultimate responsibility for the story becomes a tricky task, indeed.

Similar tactics are at work in the narration of many of the novel's other interpolated tales. The story of Colonel Moredock, for example, is told by Charlie Noble to the cosmopolitan, but responsibility for its content is passed on to his father's friend, Judge James Hall. Noble claims to have heard it from him so many times that he knows it by heart:

In every company being called upon to give this history, which none could better do, the judge at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you the judge upon the colonel almost word for word. (*CM* 142)

Later, after the cosmopolitan points out that he does not seem to be drinking his port wine, Noble offers a second digression that he cannot ultimately be held responsible for:

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"By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; a capital thing; a panegyric on the press. It pleased me so, I got it by heart at two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in something the same relation to blank verse which that does to rhyme. A sort of free-and-easy-chant with refrains to it. Shall I recite it?" (*CM* 165)

Different sorts of evasive procedures are also involved in the story of Charlemont, told by Goodman to Noble. When asked by the latter whether it is true, the cosmopolitan replies "[o]f course not; it is a story which I told with the purpose of every story-teller—to amuse" (*CM* 187). And when Egbert, acting the part of "Charlie," tells Goodman, acting the part of "Frank," the story of China Aster to legitimize his decision not to give him a loan, he introduces it in the following manner:

I will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do so in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller here has so tyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat his incidents without sliding into his style. I forewarn you of this, that you may not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story would seem to make its narrator. It is too bad that any intellect, especially in so small a matter, should have such power to impose itself upon another, against its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to know that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully approve. (*CM* 207)

The different stories fall into two categories. Some, like Noble's panegyric on the press, seem to be told with the explicit attention of diverting the current interlocutor's attention. Here the fact that *something* is said is more important than what is uttered. Some of the other stories seem to be conveying a specific message, such as "the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping a friend" implied by the story of China Aster (*CM* 221). Yet, no matter what category the stories belong to, they are all narrated in such a manner that whoever is doing the telling can feign innocence or pin the responsibility for the content on someone else, if need be; as Noble tells the cosmopolitan after having finished the story of Colonel

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Moredock: "There, I have done; have given you, not my story, mind, or my thoughts, but another's" (CM 155). Gelley therefore concludes that "[s]tories are generated in the course of the encounters, but responsibility for them is evaded, and their significance, their illustrative function, is repeatedly obscured. At the level of narrative voices an elaborate ventriloquism is at work" ("Parasitic Talk" 97). To him, this can be said to constitute "a principle of narrative displacement along a parasitic chain" ("Parasitic Talk" 99). Serres' concept of the parasitic chain might therefore not only be relevant to the relationships between the various characters in *The Confidence-Man* but can also help explain how the stories told by these characters—more likely than not with the intent of nourishing oneself on somebody else—are constantly being reiterated and modified, meaning that it becomes increasingly difficult to say who is responsible. The only thing I would add to Gelley's claim is that here the simple parasitic chain has been transformed into a much more complex and convoluted parasitic cascade.

Crucially, at the end of this parasitic cascade is none other than the narrator. Even more important than his tendency of interfering in the retelling of his character's stories, is his habit of offering various digressions that move readers out of the narrative proper. This can most clearly be seen in Chapters 14, 33, and 44, all bearing titles equally unfalsifiable and devoid of useful information: "Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering"; "Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth"; and "In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention from those readers who do not skip it," respectively. Apart from the tautological character of their titles, what these short chapters have in common is that in them, the narrator breaks off from his story of what goes on aboard the *Fidèle* to directly address his readers by means of what Gérard Genette has labeled "commentarial discourse," where the narrative "interrupts itself to give up its place to another type of discourse" (36–37), thereby bringing its own progression to a standstill. In all three cases, the narrator's aim in doing so seems to be to clarify something that he has just said that he fears might confuse or annoy people if left uncommented, and in all three, his remarks concern the nature

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of works of literature, providing what can perhaps be seen as fragments of a poetics.241

Before addressing these chapters and their function within the narrative, the brief story at the beginning of Chapter 13 must be mentioned. This anecdote concerns an unnamed American scholar in London who encounters someone he believes to be a fool, only to learn that it was none other than the great British scientist Sir Humphrey Davy, "almost as great a savan as himself" (*CM* 64). Since the story is only a quarter of a page long and seems to add little to the narrative, it is all too easy to overlook its significance. However, it should be noted that the story differs from the interpolated stories previously referred to in one crucial manner. Whereas all these stories are (ostensibly, at least) told by different characters aboard the *Fidèle*, in this case, neither confidence men nor their victims are involved. As becomes clear from the narrator's convoluted explanation, there is no doubt it is told *by* him, *to* the reader:

The above anecdote is given just here by way of an anticipative reminder to such readers as, from the kind of jaunty levity, or what may have passed for such, hitherto for the most part appearing in the man with the travelling-cap [John Truman], may have been tempted into a more or less hasty estimate of him; that such readers, when they find the same person, as they presently will, capable of philosophic and humanitarian discourse—no mere casual sentence or two as heretofore at times, but solidly sustained throughout an almost entire setting; that they may not, like the American savan, be thereupon betrayed into any surprise incompatible with their own good opinion of their previous penetration. (*CM* 64)

I will return to the anecdote and the narrator's explanation, but for now, I simply want to stress that in combination, they in a sense function as a bridge between the different stories told *in* the novel and the three chapters where the narrator directly addresses the reader.

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241 The pieces of this potential poetics should not necessarily be ascribed to Melville himself. As Dimock has rightly claimed, due to the constant slippages of meaning and inconsistencies in and between the meta-literary chapters, organizing the pieces into a coherent whole is far from easy: "'Melville' is simply not available for our enlightenment. Or rather, he is too available. He appears in too many shades and forms of ideas. He cancels himself out … in his very plenitude of utterance. He is at once manifest and unaccountable" (*Empire* 206–7).

The first of the latter is occasioned by the ending of Chapter 13, where the good merchant, who up to this point has come across as cheerful and full of faith in others, proves that he is capable of distrust, after all. Having had several glasses of wine in the company of Truman, he suddenly begins to question whether "wine or confidence [can] percolate down through all the stony strata of hard considerations, and drop warmly and ruddily into the cold cave of truth?" (*CM* 67). This reaction seems to come as a surprise both to the merchant himself, as well as his present companion, causing Roberts to withdraw "with the air of one, mortified at having been tempted by his own honest goodness, accidentally stimulated into making mad disclosures—to himself as to another—of the queer, unaccountable caprices of his natural heart" (*CM* 68). It is at this juncture the narrator takes the opportunity to address the question of consistency, and more specifically whether this is something one should expect from characters found in works of literature. As he puts it in Chapter 14, which he opens by way of an analeptic reference to the previous chapter's "anticipative reminder" to readers not to judge Truman too hastily:

As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the present must consist of one glancing backwards.

To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? (*CM* 69)242

Whereas the narrator thus freely admits to the inconsistency of the merchant's behavior, he refuses to consider this a shortcoming of the author. If it is a shortcoming, it is one resulting from the endless, inventive inconsistency of life; for, as he asks, "is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent

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242 Another occasion where the narrator makes oblique references to his own discourse can be found in Chapter 33, which he ends by referring his readers back to Chapter 14: "all such readers as may think they perceive something inharmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitan with the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with the booncompanion, are now referred to that chapter where some similar apparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles, modestly endeavored to be apologized for" (*CM* 183).

character is a *rara avis*?" (*CM* 69). Or, as he then notes: "If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life" (*CM* 70).

Moving on to "Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth," the shortest of the three chapters, it is occasioned by what happens prior to Goodman's offer to tell Noble the story of Charlemont, namely the latter's (seeming) transformation into a new shape and the cosmopolitan's (seeming) use of magic to transform him back again. Chapter 33 opens as follows:

But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont, a reply must in civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics appear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like your cosmopolitan? (*CM* 182)

This "certain voice" that the narrator thinks he hears is the voice of the critical reader who not only expects consistency from characters in works of literature, but also what is termed a "severe fidelity to real life" (*CM* 182). As a reply to this imagined critical voice, the narrator highlights that he finds it strange that anyone sufficiently in need of diversion from quotidian existence to be willing to spend time reading a book, should expect such "a work of amusement" to correspond closely to the "real life" the book was meant to offer refuge from (*CM* 182). As opposed to this type of reader, the narrator favors those that are willing to "sit down to a work of amusement tolerantly as they sit at a play, and with much the same expectations and feelings" (*CM* 182). According to the narrator, it is for such readers as these that his narrative is intended: "If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely a little is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does but seek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish of the more indulgent lovers of entertainment" (*CM* 183).

Finally, Chapter 44 aims to discuss the expression "QUITE AN ORIGINAL," which William Cream's friends had all thought a fitting description of the cosmopolitan. But, as the narrator points out, the notion of originality is problematic because most often, it is invoked by

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those with the least experience in life: "Certainly, the sense of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences" (*CM* 238). Hence, the more one has seen, the less likely one is to consider anything original. The chapter, then, can be understood as an attempt to decide whether Goodman truly deserves this epithet or not. If he does, the narrator indicates that this would mean that he belongs to a *very* select category of literary characters:

As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel, or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once. (*CM* 238)

According to the narrator, then, true originals must be distinguished from characters that are merely "singular." To substantiate this claim, he discusses how authors come to create characters that belong to either of the two categories:

For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so can there be but one original character to one work of invention. Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more than one to a book, is a good presumption there is none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. (*CM* 239)

What defines true originals is not only how rare they are, and how hard they are to create—in order to create "singular" characters, an author "must have seen much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he must have had much luck" (*CM* 239)—but also their effect on their surroundings: "the original character, essentially such, is like a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all round it—everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet)," causing "an effect, in its way, akin to that which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things" (*CM* 239). That is to say, to the

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narrator, characters are only truly original insofar as they bring a world into being; as Branka Arsić puts it, "they imply a new life that hasn't yet been formed. … Originals are formless life, impersonal atmospheres, figures without form" (*Passive* 7).243

How should these three digressive chapters, as well as of the narrator's preliminary address to the reader in Chapter 13, be understood? First, there is a marked discrepancy between the form and the content of what is said, where the form casts doubt upon the validity of the message that is seemingly conveyed. The anecdote of the American savan, for example, puts forward the simple idea that readers should avoid judging literary characters too hastily. However, given the narrator's *modus operandi* in the rest of the novel, one might ask why would he bother breaking off from his narrative if all he wanted to convey was something as commonsensical as this? With the confidence men's tactics of "idle talk" in mind, and considering that the intricate addendum to the story is slightly longer, as well as a lot less straightforward than the actual anecdote it comments upon, one might begin suspecting that the story of the American savan has been told as little more than an excuse for the narrator to directly address the readers of *The Confidence-Man*. What the narrator does here is in many ways reminiscent of what the confidence men do to their intended victims. In both cases, it is a question of making sure that a channel of transmission is set up between the sender (confidence men/ the narrator) and the intended receptor (potential victim/the reader), and then that it remains operative through the continual flow of (more or less) "idle" words, even though it is difficult to tell what exactly they are meant to convey. Here as in the rest of the novel, the fact that communication is going on might be more important than *what* is said.

A similar discrepancy between form and content also informs Chapter 14, where the narrator, as Deleuze puts it, claims "the rights of a superior irrationalism" for authors (81). Although the chapter seems to offer the vitalistic argument that authors who embrace multiplicity and change, rather than seeking too strictly to adhere to a limiting

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243 For a productive analysis that applies the distinction between singular and original characters to Melville's *oeuvre*, see Deleuze (81–84).

consistency, may be the ones that are truer to nature, it would be hard to claim that this is its ultimate message. Among other things, this is due to the way the narrator keeps digressing, adding layer upon layer of information—in the space of little more than two pages, he touches upon such issues as the resistance to newness found in scientific communities, as exemplified by the skepticism originally shown by British naturalists toward the Australian duck-billed beaver; different aspects of the psychological novel; the status of various quasi-sciences; and the finer points of human nature. In so doing, he effectively blocks any attempt to narrow down the "true" meaning of the chapter. What exactly the narrator is trying to tell his readers therefore remains just as unclear as his given reasons for breaking off from the story, which may or may not be believable. Hence, it is difficult to know whether he goes on talking because he has something specific to say, or simply to keep the words flowing. The feeling that the latter may be the case does not diminish upon reaching the end of the chapter, where it is almost as if the narrator suddenly realizes that he is, in fact, rambling, and somewhat reluctantly decides to return to the narrative proper: "But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains but to turn to our comedy or, rather, to pass from the comedy of thought to that of action" (*CM* 71).

A similar tactic of deferral can also be found at work in Chapter 44, where the narrator offers an oblique non-answer to the question of whether Goodman is an original literary character in the strict sense of the word. On the one hand, he indicates that his aim has been to show that the question should be answered in the negative—in other words, that Goodman is not original in the same sense as Don Quixote, Hamlet or Milton's Satan—but, on the other, this conclusion is formulated in a manner that draws its own validity into doubt, indicating that perhaps the cosmopolitan does qualify, after all. Not only does the narrator thus avoid answering his own question, but he also explicitly uses the uncertainty he has created as an excuse to return to his narrative:

In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase, *Quite an Original*, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the smoky. If so, the best

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use the smoke can be turned to, will be, by retiring under cover of it, in good trim as may be to the story. (*CM* 239)

In other words, the narrator seems to love the sound of his own voice no less than his parasite-like characters love their own "idle talk," manipulating his readers much like the confidence men cozen their victims.

For the longest time these manipulative attempts were entirely unsuccessful. Upon its publication in 1857, *The Confidence-Man* was a resounding failure, commercially as well as critically, and so it remained for almost one hundred years. Even after the "Melville Revival" of the 1920s, there was a long period where it was hardly read, and it was only with Elizabeth S. Foster's 1954 critical Hendricks House edition that the tide really started turning. Today, the novel is among Melville's most popular works, generating a steady abundance of critical attempts to come to terms with the peculiar noisiness of the floating world of the *Fidèle*. Accordingly, Jim Lewis might be onto something when he makes the following claim:

*The Confidence Man* is wasteful, ornery and unkempt: the book is a barnacle, a stubborn and inert parasite on the hull of the great, gliding culture above it, fastened there by a drowning man. You can't outsmart it, you can't lose it, you can't even criticize it; it seems to defy every attempt at understanding. It takes you as the confidence man takes his victims: with a patience and tenacity that will wear you down if it can't win you over. ("Melville")

If it is indeed a stubborn parasitic growth on American culture, the still ongoing attempts to understand and come to terms with its strangeness prove that parasites sometimes function as generators of newness. To finally address *The Confidence-Man*'s famous last sentence, uttered by the narrator after the cosmopolitan has extinguished the last lamp in the cabin and "kindly" led his last companion, the old man with whom he discussed Ecclesiasticus, into the ensuing darkness: "Something further may follow of this Masquerade" (*CM* 251). If the figure of the parasite is proof of anything, it is that something surely will; in Serres' words: "A microscopic parasite can be introduced into an equilibriated pathological environment, or a good-sized parasite into an economically stable system, or a noisy parasite into a dialogical message; in any case a (hi)story will follow" (*Parasite* 182–83).

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#### chapter 7

# Conclusion

It is now time to return to the claims that were made about Herman Melville's writings in Chapter 1. It was, for example, claimed that his texts are filled with characters and narrators who attempt to feed off others. That this is truly the case should by now be clear. In fact, in Melville's texts, parasitical relations are often so omnipresent that Ishmael's question might be slightly rewritten. Instead of asking "Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?" (*MD* 300), one could ask "Parasites? Who is not a parasite?" Just as Ishmael holds that cannibalistic traits can be found in civilized Westerners, no less than in unenlightened savages, it could also be argued that almost everybody in Melville has parasitic traits—the rich no less than the poor; the productive no less than the idle. The world he creates for his readers is one where no one is totally independent, and where, to some degree or another, the hospitality of others is always threatening to put the recipients in debt. This even holds for proud Ahab, who has no recourse but to ask the *Pequod's* carpenter for help in shaping him a new whalebone leg after he damages his old one: "Here I am, proud as a Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's book" (*MD* 471–72).

Thus, what Melville indicates is that, as much as one might dream of total independence, dependency upon others—be it for a whalebone leg or for a free meal to sate one's hunger—is everywhere. To arrive at a better understanding of his work, this ubiquity of sponging is something scholars should address in a much more thorough and extensive manner than has hitherto been done. This book is only a step toward this objective, and it is to be hoped that others will further explore the issues analyzed herein, be it through the conceptual figure of the parasite or by other means.

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Chapter 1 also made the claim that the manifestations of parasitism in Melville's writings are not static, but that they gradually thicken and become more complex over time. This process would no doubt have appeared differently if other works than *Typee*, "Bartleby," "Jimmy Rose" and *The Confidence-Man* had been analyzed, but in summary, we have seen how Melville started out his career by creating a parasitic character in search of free meals and an easy life of leisure. Nevertheless, when Tommo's dream comes true, he is ultimately unable truly to enjoy his privileges. His unwillingness to become a proper member of the community that hosts him, finally means that he must give up his pleasant life of "plenty and repose" in the valley of the Typees. In "Bartleby," readers encounter a small Wall-Street microcosm where a limited cast of characters sponge on each other, at least to a certain degree and part of the time, and where everything seems to revolve around the question of consumption—if not for Bartleby, at least for the narrator. Just like "Bartleby," "Jimmy Rose" features a first-person narrator with parasitic traits of his own, who is telling the story of a parasite-like character—the primary difference being that while Bartleby is a thoroughly paradoxical sponger who prefers to abstain from food, Jimmy Rose more obviously belongs to the lineage of the classical literary parasite. Finally, in *The Confidence-Man*, Melville gave shape to a chaotic, floating system where almost everybody in one way or another seems to be out to feed upon the resources of others, in the process producing an abundance of "idle talk" not unlike that which the narrator is serving his readers. As I have been suggesting, one way of framing this shift is through Serres' concepts of the parasitic chain and cascade. The evolution traced in this study can be said to go from a single parasite to a parasitic chain, to a full-blown parasitic cascade made up of several intertwining chains constantly overlapping, diverging, and folding into each other.

As a corollary, some comments may also be offered regarding the relationships between the various systems and the foreign bodies that come to inhabit them encountered in these texts, although less so in "Jimmy Rose" than in the others. In *Typee*, the parasitic Tommo is clearly an exception from the perspective of the system. More precisely, he is an exception

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the system wants to incorporate through integrating him into Typeean society, but who ultimately resists being assimilated. In "Bartleby," the narrator seems to subscribe to a similar view, treating the scrivener as a troubling anomaly that he variously tries to incorporate and expel. So strong is the fascination of this anomaly that it is only with his retelling of Bartleby's life and death that he finally manages to explain it away. From the lawyer's perspective, he can then continue believing that the parasitic is the exception, but this happens from a vantage point which is not only high up on the trophic chain, but also relatively sheltered and more stable than *laissez-faire* capitalism, due to the way capitalist dynamics and aristocratic privileges converge in his position as Master of Chancery. However, the narrative undermines this view by indicating that the parasitic is not only present in Bartleby, who might in the end be the least parasitic character in the story, but, to a larger or smaller degree, in everybody around the narrator, himself not excluded.

Thus, what begins to appear as less certain is the idea that the parasite is an exception, that it is something that does not properly belong to the system, something that enters it under false pretenses and threatens to destroy its stability. In *The Confidence-Man*, this grain of doubt has grown to near certainty. The vision of the novel is that of the system found aboard the *Fidèle* as made up of nothing but parasitic elements—strangers and "strangers still more strange" (*CM* 8)—feeding on each other. What the book hints at is that these foreign bodies are the elementary parts that make up the system in the first place; if it were possible to exclude them all, there would most likely be no system left. Thus, corresponding to the shift from the single parasite in *Typee* to the cascade of parasites in *The Confidence-Man* is an insight that gradually makes it more and more difficult to treat the parasite as an exception to some general rule, as a secondary deviation that society could easily do without; to repeat the third epigraph to Chapter 1: "There is no system without parasites. This constant is a law" (Serres, *Parasite* 12).

Finally, a claim from Chapter 2 must be addressed. During the discussion of *Bleak House*, I asserted that Melville's parasites are usually highly dissimilar from those of his great British contemporary, and by now this difference should be clear. Just like many of the most important nineteenth

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century realists and naturalists, Dickens for the most part operates with a simple dichotomy between productive and unproductive. To him, characters belonging to the second category should clearly be condemned, and for the reader to be able to do so, his immoral, selfish parasites are easily recognizable in their depravity. The irony, of course, is that they are also much more fascinating characters than his heroes, meaning that if they were to be expelled from his narratives, the Dickensian system would end up as a bland one, indeed. Such simple dichotomies are not for Melville, whose parasites are usually difficult to judge in a clear and unambiguous manner. And since many of them combine the positive and inventive with the dependent and base, it is often far from easy to figure out how to understand them, or whether to sympathize with them or not. In the end, not even a minor character like Kooloo is presented in quite as negative a manner as my discussion of *Omoo* in Chapter 1 might indicate—after having been dumped and increasingly ignored by the youth, Typee has to grudgingly admit that "[a]fter several experiences like this, I began to entertain a sort of respect for Kooloo, as quite a man of the world" (*O* 158).

Another difference between Melville and Dickens is that, to the latter, characters are either parasites or they are not; there is little middle ground and few shades of gray. What is entirely lost from view in *Bleak House* is the important question of perspective addressed in the discussion of Shakespeare's *King Richard II*, namely that one must always take into consideration who is speaking when others are accused of parasitic behavior. That something similar had been realized by Melville becomes evident in his final work of prose, *Billy Budd, Sailor*, posthumously published in 1924. This is not the occasion for a thorough reading of the tale of the handsome and popular title character, who is impressed into service as a foretopman aboard the British man-of-war *H.M.S. Bellipotent* in 1797. Instead, I want to offer some brief remarks on the novella's ending, just after Billy has been executed after having struck and killed the ship's Master-at-arms, John Claggart, who had wrongfully accused him of planning a mutiny. From the perspective of this book, the most interesting aspect of the story is the afterlife of the incident, which led to Claggart and Billy's deaths, as recollected by the narrator:

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Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of "News from the Mediterranean," there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an authorized weekly publication, an account of the affair. It was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, though the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part falsify them. (*BB* 70)

This naval chronicle presents what will come to stand as the official version of the events leading up to Billy's execution. The account wrongly claims that after Claggart had discovered his plotting and notified the captain, he "was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath knife of Budd" (*BB* 70). The chronicle then offers the following description of Billy's supposed background, which—it is strongly indicated—helps explain his violent actions:

The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that though mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom the present extraordinary necessities of the service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable numbers. (*BB* 70)

In other words, Billy is presented as an "alien," a foreign body who has infiltrated the British navy to damage it from within. Even though the word "parasite" is not used here, this type of discourse closely resembles that which near the end of Melville's life was becoming increasingly common among anti-Semites, and which would about fifty years later help legitimate the Holocaust in Germany: the idea of the Jew as a damaging parasite threatening to destroy the social body. Claggart, on the other hand, is portrayed as the incarnation of patriotism and responsibility: "His function was a responsible one, at once onerous and thankless; and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong patriotic impulse" (*BB* 70). For all patriotic citizens reading this brief report, it would have been a relief to learn that "[t]he criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now apprehended aboard H.M.S. *Bellipotent*" (*BB* 70). The damaging foreign body having been effectively eradicated, the system is therefore

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free to return to its normal state—or so runs the official story—with this incident quickly fading from the public's memory. As the narrator puts it: "The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, is all that hitherto has stood in human record to attest what manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd" (*BB* 70).

That is, it would have faded entirely from the public's memory, were it not for the fact that a counter-narrative exists. While not powerful enough to challenge the official version of the incident, it is still the one that is allowed to conclude *Billy Budd, Sailor*. This is the poem "Billy in the Darbies," said to have "found rude utterance from another foretopman, … gifted, as some sailors are, with an artless *poetic* temperament" (*BB* 71; emphasis in the original). Offering a compassionate look at Billy's last hours, it is very different from the dehumanizing, official discourse of the naval chronicle. That the narrator's own sympathies are not to be found with the latter is obvious in light of the poem's ending, where Billy addresses his guard, asking him to ease his handcuffs "at the wrist,/ And roll me over fair!/ I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist" (*BB* 72). Here it becomes clear that Melville, too, must have felt some of the skepticism toward official statements about who should be considered parasitical foreign bodies, as expressed by Shakespeare in *King Richard II*. Just as Melville makes his proper entry on the literary scene with Tommo's elegy for (free) meals, he makes his final bow with the narrator of *Billy Budd* enjoining readers not to be too hasty in condemning others as damaging foreign bodies. The parasite thus seems to have been there with him from the beginning of his career and to the very end.

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*Melvillean Parasites* addresses an aspect of Herman Melville's authorship largely overlooked by previous scholars: the abundance of narrators and characters in his writings in search of food—an aim they typically pursue through sponging off the people they encounter. Deploying the conceptual figure of the parasite as its primary analytical tool, the book interprets how the dream of a free meal plays out and is given literary form in *Typee* (1846), "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853), "Jimmy Rose" (1855), and *The Confidence-Man* (1857). In so doing, *Melvillean Parasites* aims to explain how Melville's engagement with ethicopolitical issues concerning nourishment, dependency upon others, hospitality, and responsibility toward strangers, evolved and changed over time. Compared to the tendency of dehumanizing the parasite found in many of his contemporaries, the book claims that what sets him apart, is his insight into the unavoidable parasitic tendencies of us all: Herman Melville—patron saint of the parasite. *Melvillean Parasites* addresses an aspect of Herman Melville's authorship largely overlooked by previous scholars: the abundance of narrators and characters in his writings in search of food—an aim they typically pursue through sponging off the people they encounter. Deploying the conceptual figure of the parasite as its primary analytical tool, the book interprets how the dream of a free meal plays out and is given literary form in *Typee* (1846), "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853), "Jimmy Rose" (1855), and *The Confidence-Man* (1857). In so doing, *Melvillean Parasites* aims to explain how Melville's engagement with ethicopolitical issues concerning nourishment, dependency upon others, hospitality, and responsibility toward strangers, evolved and changed over time. Compared to the tendency of dehumanizing the parasite found in many of his contemporaries, the book claims that what sets him apart, is his insight into the unavoidable parasitic tendencies of us all: Herman Melville—patron saint of the parasite.

*Melvillean Parasites* is intended for scholars, students, and general readers with an interest in the concept of the parasite, as well as Herman Melville's authorship, American literature, and 19th century studies in general. *Melvillean Parasites* is intended for scholars, students, and general readers with an interest in the concept of the parasite, as well as Herman Melville's authorship, American literature, and 19th century studies in general.

Anders M. Gullestad is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen. Anders M. Gullestad is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen.

"Gullestad's very strong book stands as a novel and important contribution to Melville scholarship. In connecting questions raised by concepts such as friendship, relationality, welcoming, exploiting, and laboring into a single question—that of parasitism—it not only casts new light on how we understand those concepts, but also on what appears to be Melville's own theory of the phenomenon of parasitism." "Gullestad's very strong book stands as a novel and important contribution to Melville scholarship. In connecting questions raised by concepts such as friendship, relationality, welcoming, exploiting, and laboring into a single question—that of parasitism—it not only casts new light on how we understand those concepts, but also on what appears to be Melville's own theory of the phenomenon of parasitism."

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– Branka Arsić, Columbia University, author of *Passive Constitutions or 7 1/2 Times Bartleby* – Branka Arsić, Columbia University, author of *Passive Constitutions or 7 1/2 Times Bartleby*

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