PETER HUSTON
Penn and Teller's How to Play in Traffic. By Penn Jillette and Teller. Boulevard Books, New York. 1997. ISBN 157297-293-9. 227 pp. Softcover, $18.95
As most readers know, Penn and Teller are a well-known pair of comedian/magicians who specialize in irreverent humor and bizarre, shocking, magical effects. This is their third book, following Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends and How to Play with Your Food, For better or worse, it shows little change or growth from their previous books, and it is safe to say that if you like them, you'll like their books. If you've never heard of them, and like cynical humor with a hip, skeptical tinge, then by all means make a point of finding out who these guys are. How to Play in Traffic is not a bad book, but it does lack some of the crispness and freshness of their previous books.
Successful entertainers often fall into a trap. Either they can reinvent themselves, and risk losing some of their audience, or they can repeat themselves, and risk seeming stale. This seems to be the challenge facing Penn and Teller, an act traditionally based on innovation and shock value. In parts of How to Play in Traffic. however, they don't quite seem to know how to deal with this challenge.
For instance, the book is laced with smug, in-your-face references to the Penn and Teller moral code. Briefly, this can be summed up as "Alcohol, drugs, censorship, and religion arc very bad. Homosexuality is fine. Strip clubs, sex, pranks, and card tricks arc very good." Unfortunately, if you don't subscribe to this dictum, or have heard it before, then it wears thin about halfway through the first time its thrown in your face, and this book is over two hundred pages long.
Despite this, the book does fulfill its promise of offering Penn and Teller fans more of their material. The authors tell stories about travel, magicians, and carnival life. They teach the reader magic tricks, and have conveniently categorized them by level of difficulty. Skeptics should enjoy several of these, including the portions of the book where the authors show how to create visions of the Virgin Mary with a polaroid camera. Unlike their previous books, this one does not include a "gimmicks bag" containing props for tricks, although it does have a one-page, dear plastic insert to be used for the purpose.
Penn and Teller frequently advocate skeptical thinking in their works. In this one, however, much of the skepticism is confined to attacks on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his spiritualism, or a thousand and one perverse uses for a Gideon bible. Perhaps promoting more constructive activities or pointing the reader toward resources they might not have heard of would be a better use of the pages. If you're a long-time Penn and Teller fan, you should like this. If you're not familiar with the pair, their earlier books might make a better introduction to their style and substance.
Peter Huston writes from Schenectady, New York