Daniel Handler Preface to The Confidence-Man

[Dante]

The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville. A book Handler said, prior to the release of TPP, that readers of the twelfth book would enjoy. Several years ago, a new edition was released with a preface by Daniel Handler, and I've only just noticed that Amazon's Look Inside feature allows us to read that preface in full. Actually, since I know I've checked before, I suspect it was updated at some point.
Read it here.
Of interest is a remark Handler makes of having once written a book under a disguised name that he had planned to structure around The Confidence-Man. This is probably a reference to TPP. But it's also a very entertaining piece of writing in its own right.
(Note: I have a Hell of a time getting the thing to load. If you just get an endless "loading" box, refresh the page and try again.)

[Christmas Chief]

Very entertaining indeed! Some parts of the preface reminded me of parts in TGG, which of course also had a mention towards Melville.

[Hermes]

It's fascinating. 'Under a disguised name' seems a rather odd way to describe TPP - it's not as if Lemony Snicket's identity was a secret - but interesting though it would be if there were a secret novel by DH that no one knew about, I suspect you're right.

By the way, the whole of The Confidence Man - though obviously without the Handler preface, and without the introduction and notes contained in this edition - is available at Project Gutenberg, for those who are interested but don't want to fork out money

[Dante]

I already own a copy. If there's one thing the old series did that I hope the new series does, it's to make us buy classical literature in the vain hope of gleaning clues about the plot.

[Hermes]

To be sure. But I bought Green Mansions because of LS's use of it, and rather regretted it afterwards; and in the light of this you advised me not to read TCM - so I thought this advice might be useful to faint-hearted people like myself.

[Christmas Chief]

I haven't even attempted reading it because of its reputation for being complicated and difficult to follow; but perhaps now I may try having read Handler's take on it.

[Dante]

It's certainly true that one might well be misled into thinking that some of the works alluded to have more relevance than they actually do. If you'd read, for example, Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island prior to reading The End, you would have imagined the latter novel to have a very different plotline. On the other hand, it's not as if these works aren't readable in their own right; you just have to know what you to expect, or at least what not to expect.