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Eyeing the Flash : The Making of a Carnival Con Artist
Eyeing the Flash The Making of a Carnival Con Artist Author:Peter Fenton The memoir of a shy middle-class kid turned first-classhuckster. The year is 1963, the setting small-town Michigan. Pete Fenton is just another well-mannered math student until he meets Jackie Barron, a teenage grifter who introduces him to the carnival underworld--and lures him with the cons, the double-dealing, and, most of all, the easy mone... more »y.
NY Times: Mr. Fenton describes his transformation from high school nerd to midway con artist with great comic gusto, in the tart, cynical tone one might expect of someone who made a living taking nickels and dimes from small children at the duck-pond game...He regards with a cold, delighted eye the weakness, greed and duplicity of the carnival world, where human beings come in only two varieties: 'marks,' or suckers, and the wise guys who divest them of their cash...The elite flatties could pick the pockets of their marks and still leave them laughing in wonderment...« less
Adulthood, like the midway itself...a world of flashing lights, pounding music, cheap thrills and even cheaper suits, not to mention deceir, perishable pleasures and no curfews--Lee K. Abbott, The News and Observer, Raleigh, NC