318 RüdigerKunow
The conventional wisdom of literary critical readings ofthe novel is
summarized by Branch et al. when they say, "The book plays on the
central notion of 'confidence'—overconfidence at one extreme and
churlish or misanthropic lack of confidence on the other; it explores
'confidence' in relation to many aspects of life" (256).^146 And indeed,
trust as social and (of course) material capital motivates much of the
actioninthisratherplotless,ratherserialnarrative.Theconfidence-man
in his various guises (if they are his guises), as herb-doctor, as
cosmopolitan,as agent of the Seminole Widow and Orphan Asylum, as
representative of the Philosophical Intelligence Office, and so on, does
not perhaps quite embody this trust so much as he is an occasion for
introducing the question of trust, respectively confidence, in the public
domain of person-to-person interaction. The format in which this
question is brought up is dialogical as Branch et al. noted (256) or,
perhaps better, conversational—an early reviewer counted 45 of such
exchanges (qtd. in Hoffman 285)—and in their course, many of the
issuesthathaveoccupiedhumankindin generalanditsAmericanbrand
in particular are reviewed: Orpheus' decent into hell, Prometheus, Jesus
Christ, the conversation of Native Americans, the status of African
Americans,etc.
This conversational fabric is also the context in which the spectral
nature of disability, real or fake, arises and is negotiated. Already the
presenceofthefirstdisabledcharacter,theDeafMute,elicits,asshown
above, a variety of responses, "conflictingly spoken or thought" (7),
most of which seek to fathom the ulterior motives behind his strange
behaviorbutwithoutreachingagreement.The"grotesquenegrocripple"
(the Black Guinea) which next arouses interest among the passengers
(^146) Older readings of the novel by Richard Chase, Daniel Hoffman, or F. O.
Matthiessen emphasize the social-realist, even panoramic, nature of the novel
and its satiric ambitions (Chase 185-209; Hoffman 279; Matthiessen 373)
whereasmorerecentinterpretationstendtoemphasizethepoliticaldimensionof
thetext,asacritiqueof19thcentury"economicsofanatomy,charity,andsocial
role" (Mitchell and Snyder, "Masquerades of Impairment" 35) and a reflection
on "the changed nature of class structure and social relationships" (E. Samuels,
"From Melville to Eddie Murphy" 80). The strong presence of disability is here
often read as a figure "for cultural anxieties over issues of identity, truth and
community"(62).