Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- An omniscient but tight-lipped narrator who waxes poetic on the art of character-creation; nearly a dozen characters, half of whom might just be the devil in a feat of shape-shifting; and stories within stories within hypothetical conversations—this text is structurally dense. What does all of this fancy footwork do to our experience of the text?
- This book is about humanity as framed by two specific conflicts: greed vs. charity and trust vs. distrust. What are the limitations of using these issues as the measure of mankind?
- The Confidence-Man is not characterized as magical realism, but there are some wacky moments that need explaining. How would you decide into what genre or genres this text falls?
- Is casting the devil as a (the?) confidence-man a cop-out? Does this make the test of one's fellow man more or less compelling?
- No character in The Confidence-Man is actually proven to be a crook beyond a shadow of a doubt. The most we get is some incredibly suspicious behavior that can't be easily explained, or that can't be explained away without us feeling like a sucker. How does this lack of ease regarding the novel's characters and events help or hinder us in our ability to judge the characters' actions? Why is it so important that our understanding of any given event is called into question?