Todd Robbins is a con man and a good one too. This is both comforting and disturbing as one reads his new book, aptly titled The Modern Con Man: How to Get Something For Nothing. He’s a con man of the first order, having made the rounds of the late night talkshows, performed at Carnegie Hall and swindled a thousand suckers. He parts fools from money with the precision of a surgeon. On the other hand, one can’t help but think, paging through his musings, descriptions of tricks and the other sundry segments that make up the text, that his biggest con is having made you part with $16.95 for a copy of his book.
Of the hundred or so “scams” in the book, many are based on puns and verbal slipperiness, some rely of sleight of hand or layman physics and others on rudimentary logic. A few are simply illegal. A con, for example, called the “The Impossible Drink” is essentially relies on sophistry. Bet your victim (or mark, as they are called) a “whole bottle of the fancy stuff” you can drink from a bottle without opening it Robbins explains: Just flip the bottle over, pour a little of some other drink into the bottom concave part and “drink from the bottle.”
In a game called NIM in which two players draw matches from a pile of twenty in groups of 1,2 or 3 with the player drawing the last match losing, the “scam” is a numbers game. The “trick” in this case is to make each turn add up to four. If he takes two, you take two, etc. You’ll never lose. Bubbles in Guinness sink to the bottom. That’s good for a round of drinks, or at least in Robbins’ world.
Maybe--but at my local bar, the “Impossible Drink” scam yielded only open hostility and choice words here impossible to print. And though bubbles do sink to the bottom of Guinness (something to do with the density) no one was willing to bet me anything over it. Robbins’ tricks are fine and enjoyable to read about and, in his hands, surely effective. But almost without exception the con doesn’t make the con man; the man does. And that one doesn’t learn from a book.
In the section entitled “Work Wagers: How to Scam Your Coworkers” which comes after Bar Bets but before “Friendly” Wagers, Robbins suggests setting up a web domain and creating an email address to pose as your CEO. “Using that –mail addressm contact a new employee who hasn’t fully acclimated to you office. Welcome him to Smith Inc. and sound like a CEO….now the fun begins.” Among the suggested emails to send: “It’s so-and-so’s birthday [ NOTE: It’s not really.] Round up some folks and some cake and make it happen.” And “A wrestling tea might improve morale. Round up men and women for five different weight classes.” Not to sound like a legalistic Debbie Downer but I’m pretty sure this scam is violating a whole raft of Equal Opportunity legislation.
More compelling than the mischeif is the down-at-the-heels seedy world it evokes. Despite the title, it’s certainly not modern. The bars are filled with smoke, traveling salesman in fedoras. The slatted blinds are drawn. Ordering whiskeys neat, are con men with names like Titanic Thompson, Ol’ Doc Shannon and Jefferson “Soapy” Smith. It seems a lot like the set of an Arthur Miller play but one filled with nasty Pinter characters mounting Mamet-like scams. Most of the tricks seem retrofitted for the American twilight years of sad proud men just getting by who, coincidentally, are the biggest suckers of all. Who even carries boxes of matches these days?
Even more enjoyable though than this nostalgic whisky-and-shadow soaked hinterland the book evokes, there is a sinister pleasure in the joy Robbins takes in swindling. At heart, Robbins—and all con men—are Manicheans. “The world is rapidly becoming separated into the Deceivers and the Deceived,” he writes, “The sooner you decide which group you want to be in, the better off you will be.” There’s a crumminess at work here that, in its own way, is purifying. A sneering us-them ugliness cloaked in lingo and steeped in lore. Robbins’ gift-as a writer and as a con man—is making you buy into it.
