Should I trust you?

Trust is a strange thing. 

But, first, the book.

I started Melville’s The Confidence-Man expecting a novel.  I discovered something else.  What?  I am not sure what it was.  There is a story here, if you define story loosely, very loosely.  On a Mississippi riverboat, there are a lot of conversations.  The whole book is conversations.  There is presumably—it is never stated explicitly—one person—presumably the titular character—again, it is never stated—who is  a party in all the conversations in the book.  But, said person is constantly changing everything about himself from conversation to conversation.  In one conversation he is a wealthy seller of stock, in another he is a seller of patent medicine, in another he is dressed as a harlequin.  The parties with whom our titular character converses change too, but not always.  Sometimes the same person has conversations with multiple incarnations of The Confidence–Man.  Confused?  It gets better.  There is no narrative progression from conversation to conversation.  The book starts with a blind man (presumably the main character) walking through the crowd with a signboard.  It ends with a conversation in the dark with (presumably) our main character leading a blind man to his bunk.  In between?  Uh…never mind about it getting easier to describe.

So, this isn’t really a novel.  It isn’t really anything.  The closest thing would be a series of conversations all of which more or less, usually less, are about confidence.  At first, I thought the book was going to be a long build-up to finding out how The Confidence-Man was setting up some elaborate scam on board a ship.  But, the scam never materializes.  There are lots of scams—well, at least I assume they were scams, but since there never really is a story which goes anywhere, why do I mistrust the Confidence Man?  Maybe they weren’t scams at all.  Maybe the stock being sold was real.  Maybe the charity was real.  Maybe the crippled guy really was a crippled guy.

All of which leads to the question of trust.  I don’t trust the Confidence-Man in this book.  I think it was one guy who kept changing his appearance.  But why?  Why don’t I believe all these people were genuine and different people?  Why do I have no confidence that the characters in this book are actually who they say they are?

This is a whole book with conversations about the nature of confidence.  It is meandering and convoluted and odd.  (It is, indeed, a Plane Book.)

So, getting at the question another way:  Why does anyone ever trust you?  We often talk about when you should trust other people.  But, why should you, the Reader, be trusted?  What makes you, the Reader, worthy of trust?  And if you had to convince someone that you were worthy of trust, how would you do that?  Is the way you would convince someone you were worthy of trust the same as the way others could convince you that they are worthy of trust?

I think about trust a lot, actually.  Why do people trust me?  I am never quite sure.  It is not that I think I am unworthy of trust.  It is that I have no idea how anyone ever arrives at the conclusion that I am worthy of trust.  What is it that I do that signals to someone else that I can be trusted?  How do people know I am not running some elaborate scam?  How do people know I won’t instantly betray them?  Could I sell patent medicine to total strangers on a Mississippi riverboat?  I don't think so.  But, that is because I cannot imagine ever perpetrating such a scam and so I have an impossible time imagining I could be convincing.  When I think about that, I realize that a trustworthy person would have a difficult time gaining trust under false pretenses.  But, how is a trustworthy person able to convey that aspect of his nature?  If trustworthiness is by definition not amenable to experimentation, then how is it displayed?  This is not some hypothetical problem.  Every day, every person has to constantly face the question of whether someone who was just encountered is trustworthy.  We make the decision on trustworthiness instantly, all the time.  How do we know?

Which gets me back to the book.  Why do I mistrust the character in this book?  Why do I assume all these people are really one person?  Why do I assume that one person is not trying to demonstrate the importance of trust?  Why don’t I just think this is a book all about a virtuous person who got on a boat with the sole intention of improving the lives of everyone on the boat by enabling them to demonstrate trust in a complete stranger?

Trust is odd.  And, after reading a book about it, I have no more answers to the quandaries of trust than I had before I read it.  Indeed, I feel betrayed by this book.  I thought it was going to be a novel, and it wasn't.  I thought there would be a story, and there wasn't.  Melville has betrayed my trust.