Review: "God No!" by Penn Jillette

The magic of unbelief

I'm one of those d-u-m-m theists that Penn Teller probably thinks is an idiot, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this book. "God, No!" is part biography and part polemic from Penn Teller, the tall half of the wonder magician duo of Penn & Teller. Penn is a terrific and funny writer, and his oversized persona comes across on every page. He's darned opinionated too, which makes for naughty and gossipy reading. P fancies himself a magic purist, and doesn't care about folks with animal acts, for instance. This means that he has quite complicated views of fellow performers like Siegfried & Roy. On one hand, he is absolutely enamored of their almost desperate need for love - P loves their utter devotion to their act. But he hates animal acts, and was not buying Roy's excuse that the tiger who attacked him was actually trying to help him. P is a realist, above all. He even berates himself for trashing S&R on Howard Stern's show, and shows S&R to be better gentlemen by thanking him for the mention. They fare better than Chris Angel and others who try to add mystery to their mundane magic acts. Kreskin and Valentino, the Masked Magician, come in for their fair share his opprobrium, too.

The book is full of stories like this. Penn visits a sex club (and tries to get picked up by a guy) in San Francisco. He gets naked and weightless on the Vomit Comet. Penn tells how his church-going parents got turned off to religion, and hints at the openness of his own marriage. He has a large heart and a large libido, and is not one to constrain his ego or his sexuality, any more than he would fit his 7-foot frame into a size-small jumpsuit.

"God, No!" can be a rough read. Penn drops plenty of F-bombs. And for reasons that are unclear to me, he publishes a letter he wrote to Penthouse, graphically describing a supposed first-person underwater sexual encounter. He sings the wonders of breast implants. Definitely NC-17 stuff.

Anyway, churchy though I am, I loved the book and couldn't get enough of it. P's dishing and fascinating stories made this an extremely easy and fun read. Religious people don't need to worry that P will turn them into flaming atheists. Indeed his arguments about theology are not terribly sophisticated. I guess that for a guy who spends his time fooling people, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that many preachers are in the same game. Fair enough. Take Penn's intellectual abilities with a grain of salt, if you must. But give him points for writing one of the most open, honest, funny and heartfelt books ever!