Memoir of a scam artist reads like another trick
Sunday, January 16, 2005Eyeing the Flash: The Education of a
Carnival Con Artist
By Peter Fenton
SIMON & SCHUSTER; 244 PAGES; $23
Peter Fenton has spent most of his life telling beguiling stories. His memoir, "Eyeing the Flash: The Education of a Carnival Con Artist," reveals how many of his early tales were based on deception. But what about the memoir itself? It doesn't take long to suspect that this con man can't quite ever tell the truth.
"Eyeing the Flash" is a story of how a kid learned to pull off scams. As he tells it, Fenton was a shy teenager in the Detroit suburbs during the 1960s, with an alcoholic father and a talent for adding numbers. He becomes charmed by a slick teen named "Jackie" whose family runs low-budget carnivals. Jackie teaches Fenton a grab bag of card tricks and simple cons. Together, the boys run a casino in Jackie's basement lair, cheerfully ripping off their fellow students and the occasional teacher. Fenton blossoms into a card shark, and proudly learns to dress like a one-trick pimp. Fenton is shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that Jackie is ripping him off, too. But eventually, Fenton gets the chance to scam his teacher. All's well that ends well, and in the end they troop merrily off to college or, in Jackie's case, Wharton School of Business.
Or so Fenton says.
There's a disclaimer at the beginning of the book that "names and certain identifying characteristics" of pretty much everybody in the book have been changed. Fenton captures the weird flavor of the era, portraying it as an alcohol-laced, puke-covered joyride. But if you believe that the details he describes from 40 years ago are genuine, I suspect he also has a bridge he'd like to sell you.
What does ring true is Fenton's enthusiasm for scamming people. Four years and scores of scams into their friendship, Jackie tells Fenton that he's looking for a way out of the carnival business and has plans to go to college and get a job on Wall Street. Fenton is incredulous. " 'As far as I'm concerned, becoming an agent (who helps run scams at the carnival) is the best thing that's ever happened to me,' " Fenton tells Jackie. " 'I feel great when I'm working a mark, putting one over on him. Even a 10-year-old kid.' And at that moment, I understood why: ... I was constitutionally suited to being an a -- carny."
Jackie gives Fenton a copy of John Scarne's "Complete Guide to Gambling" (a genuine best-seller) and begins to teach him the basics. Many of the scams are numbingly simple: The "Duck Pond" features a circular basin with a water jet and a flotilla of rubber ducks that circle through the basin, passing through a tunnel. Each duck has a number painted on its underside that corresponded to a "flash," or prize. Customers (a.k.a. "marks") pull out a duck and collect their prize. Most of the flash is cheap stuff. Customers see the carny working the booth put the duck with the Big Prize -- say, a television set -- into the water. What the mark inevitably misses: The carny makes sure that the Big Prize duck disappears into the tunnel, never to reappear.
What shines through the carnival patter, however, is Fenton's contempt for the people who fall for his tricks. "All marks are dummies, who'd stare in drop-jawed fascination at a spinning hubcap if admission were free. Marks were drawn to the midway by cheap thrills and danger. I was just giving them what they came for."
The final chapter is written with the pacing of a made-for-TV movie: Fenton and Jackie confront each other in a "Bust Out," a daylong contest to see who can pocket more money by running a series of scams. Each has small triumphs and flops and, of course, our narrator ultimately carries the day with the biggest scam of all.
After the showdown, however, the book sputters to a close. Jackie, we're told, went to Wharton. (Or maybe he didn't. Even Fenton doesn't seem to know.) Fenton heads to the University of Michigan, where he's bored after 24 hours. He then heads off into the sunset to search for more carnivals. There are no big morality lessons here, no analysis of what the experience means. He just moves on.
Curious readers will discover from the author's biographical statement that Fenton eventually wound up writing for the National Enquirer for 15 years. He's written two other books, including one that lists 100 or so sensational headlines and challenges readers to guess which ones are "real" (as in, printed in the Enquirer) and which are Fenton concoctions. (Predictably, it's nearly impossible to tell them apart.)
Calling "Eyeing the Flash" nonfiction seems a silly pretense. Like all the scams Fenton ran during his carnival career, this story probably has threads of truth woven into a background of hyperbole -- but only Fenton knows for sure. As a work of fiction, the book features characters too ambiguous and underdeveloped to be compelling. If you feel nostalgic for the tawdry aspects of the late 1960s, you might enjoy this. But if you pay for the book, remember that nothing makes Fenton happier than pocketing the money of the mark in front of him. •
Elizabeth Corcoran is a contributing editor for Forbes magazine.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/16/RVGL1AM1OS1.DTL
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