Author: Mario Puzo, straight out of Hell’s Kitchen, NY.
Category: American Literature, contemporary literature
Why I Read It: While I’ve always vaguely known that the movie is always presented as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and not just The Godfather I was really surprised when I saw this book on a shelf. It never clicked with me that there was a novel before the movie. So I picked it up.
Reading Time Period: August 6, 2010-August 13, 2010.
Book Printing and Condition: Printed in 1983 by Signet. Whoever had this book originally bought it from Wal-Mart, probably recently, before handing it off. I’m not even sure this other person read it, it’s in such good condition. It looks like it’s right off the shelf.
Where I bought it: The Salvation Army in Cheyenne, WY, for fifty cents.
Thoughts: It’s been a while since I saw the movie, and I’ve only seen it once, and yeah, I know, that’s probably sacrilege right there to admit, but you know what? I’m not as enamored with the movie as the rest of the world is. There’s a possibility that I’m just too far removed from the type of moviemaking they were doing in the seventies, but I doubt it because there’s a lot of other movies from that era I’m in love with. I just think that it moves a bit too slow and it tries to cover way too many characters for even a three hour long movie. Also, I prefer Goodfellas.
ANYWAY, since I’ve only seen the movie once, and since that was a while ago, while I had a vague idea of what was going to happen next I was still surprised at a few of the things that happened. Like when Sonny died. I know, pivotal scene and all, but I just totally blanked on it and then it happened and I was pissed. I loved Sonny.
Creating characters with layers is one of Mario Puzo’s strengths. Making the reader like these characters even after detailing the horrible things they’ve done is another. He’s a manipulator of emotions, and he has to be. He’s detailing the world and lives of a family crime syndicate. The reader can’t be completely disgusted or turned off by the actions of the heroes or you’ve got no book. There has to be some spark of humanity. When you get right down to it, Don Corleone is a self centered, self absorbed, murderous, villainous, nutbag who thinks he can control the world and does everything he can to do it. But the way Puzo paints him, he’s practically a saint. He’s smart, emotional, and loyal to his family. And the thing is, it’s not a matter of hiding the first description by pretending he’s the second. Don Corleone is all those things – self centered and loyal, murderous and smart, villainous and emotional. Puzo never tries to hide the negative parts of Corleone, but he very smartly highlights the positive parts.
Forget Don Corleone, even. Puzo got me to like freaking Luca Brasi, even after the revelation of his past.
Unfortunately, Puzo is not without fault. The book and the characters were very compelling, and I kept coming back to the book because I had to know what was going to happen. On the other hand, if Puzo was writing about something that wasn’t interesting to me I might have put the book down before I finished, something I rarely do.
Because Puzo is not really a very good writer. He’s got no flow, he gets hung up on the same idea, he’ll tell us something, and then two chapters later tell us the same exact thing in almost the same exact way. For example, in Chapter 23, after Michael has married Apollonia in Sicily (and I’m ignoring the whole feminist issue going on here in the book because it was the sixties and male writers were mostly idiots back then when it came to women), Puzo tells us that, “Michael passed the time by teaching Apollonia to read and write English and to drive the car along the inner walls of the villa.” In Chapter 24, seven pages later, we get “But Michael sometimes let Apollonia guide the Alfa Romeo around the inside of the villa walls…” Yes, yes Puzo, we know, okay? You just told us that. He does this through the entirety of the book, telling it to us once, and then a few pages later telling us again, like we may have forgotten.
Or he adds in details at the worst time. In Chapter 20 we learn that there’s a whole Sicilian family out there that pretty much just farms its members out as hostages because they’re so Swiss in the situation killing one of them would be tantamount to starting World War III. In explaining this, Puzo says: “For instance, when Michael had gone to meet Sollozzo, a Bocchicchio had been left with the Corleone Family as surety for Michael’s safety…” This is the very first we’re hearing about it; during the actual event, which took place over a hundred pages earlier, the name Bocchiocchio isn’t heard anywhere. It makes the whole thing sound sloppy. Why doesn’t someone mention that name earlier? We don’t need an explanation then if we were going to get it later – although, knowing Puzo, he’d probably explain several times.
Both these aspects of his writing combined just gave off this vibe that this was the first and only draft of this story, and that he never went back at any point to reread what he had written. He’d write a description and then fifty pages later forget he had written it and write it again. Or he’d realize he should have dropped something earlier, but didn’t bother to go back to fit it in. There’s also way too many spelling errors throughout the work, and originally I had blamed it on a shoddy printing, but if he didn’t go back to fix major errors, why would he go back for the little ones?
Oh, and this sentence has to be highlighted, because it reveals exactly how much damage Puzo can do to the English language:
“It was a coldness that came off him like death and Kay knew that it was this coldness that would make her decide not to marry him if she so decided.”
That’s on page 362. I am not making it up. And that’s not the only line like that. Puzo is clumsier with the language than a drunk toddler.
So, Puzo probably could have used a few more writing classes, but the book itself is still worth trying out. It’s interesting to read before seeing the movie, because, obviously, a three hour movie can’t cover everything in the book, so it kind of fills in the blanks. Still, though, check out Goodfellas. Easily my favorite gangster movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment