This week I’m looking at books that I think are worth rereading – and that I’ve reread more than once. These stand up to my tests, and I’ll try to articulate what it is I like about them. If any of them intrigue you, I hope you’ll give them a shot. I envy you the first-time experience.
Puzo’s great rags-to-riches story has diverted me from more deadlines and projects than I’d like to admit to. It’s an ideal combination of violent crime thriller, intricate palace intrigue, and affecting immigrant experience from the epigraph (“Every great fortune starts with a great crime” – Balzac) to the last line (“Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as
she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.”). Coppola’s film (from the parts I’ve seen) captures the nearly suffocating atmosphere of secrecy and code of ethics that governs the Corleone Family, but the details Puzo created still have a resonance that I’ve not taken from the visual representation.
For one thing, the great central section of the novel, following Vito Corleone’s life from Sicilian poverty to the pinnacles of power, had to be filmed as Godfather II. To me, that is the most interesting story – not Michael’s seduction into Family life, because Michael had grown up with nearly complete knowledge of the Family’s olive oil business. As Puzo describes it, Don Corleone’s ascent from invisible laborer to a man of respect is the result of a mature decision followed by a ruthless struggle to achieve his vision. It is also the portrait of an immigrant who takes the American Dream to its logical and frightening extremes by seeing through the myths of American society.
Corleone’s small-f family has some great dynamics to it. The undisciplined eldest Sonny, the second-born Freddie (whose competition with Sonny turns sour), the pragmatic third child Michael and Connie, the indulged baby, all cause their own brand of trouble to their father. The Don’s wife (I can’t remember if she is even named!) is the home center, but her family has moved beyond their need for her, and she remains a minor character in this story. For all of his demonstrated ability to manipulate, even murder, people without consequences, Don Corleone is in his own way an ethical man. Puzo is able to develop that prim side of the Don without irony, while showing that even the most powerful man’s Achilles heel may be his own family.
The Godfather, both film and book, created many touchstone phrases that have shown up in popular culture and continue to resonate. The ominous but not overtly threatening “I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse” is perhaps the best known. “Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes” is a pitch perfect death notice. “Omerta” became a byword during the Nixon White House’s stonewalling on Watergate. Reading them in the original context takes any humor out of those other uses and is a reminder of the ever-present violence lurking in the world Puzo recreates.
I reread The Godfather when I’m looking for a strong plot peopled with interesting characters, an immersion in US history from the early to mid-20th century, or an inside view of a dark and dangerous subculture. There are still sections I find compelling (Michael’s courtship and marriage to a Sicilian girl is one) even when I know what’s going to happen, and that always makes rereading fun. Plus I’ve nearly always got a deadline that need evading.
Check the WRL catalog for The Godfather
Heck, check for the film as well
[…] a great crime. This paraphrase from Honoré de Balzac provides the epigraph for Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, but could just as easily have fronted Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning story of […]