The Godfather (The Novel) B-

I plan to use this blog as a reviewing platform for books, movies, and music. I am interested in many diverse things, so it should be interesting to look back in a few months and see all the pieces of art and academe I have ingested. In keeping with that plan I will give a short review of the last book I have finished, "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo, published in 1969.

I'm sure many people know this book by its movie incarnation, as I did. In fact, I still do and always will. The book was a great piece of story telling, mostly in keeping with the Godfather Pt.1. The aspects of Vito Corleone's life (that's the Godfather) that are covered by the film the Godfather Pt. 2 are also included. There are also a few tangential story lines stemming from characters introduced in the opening scene, Connie Corleone's wedding. Other than that, the book is the movie almost scene for scene.

This would be the third addition to my list of movies which are better than the books they are based on (Fight Club, Deliverance the others). Puzo reveals the thought processes and inner monologues of the wide cast of characters in an episodic fashion, keeping the reader an outsider to the insular world of Italian organized crime in America.

Many times when I compare a novel and the movie adapted from it I say "How could they cut that scene?" While reading "The Godfather" I found myself saying "Thank God they cut that scene" The tangential characters find their way back to the main story line in the last 50 pages, but to no consequence. These individual stories are only marginally interesting in their own rite, and rather pointless compared to the sanguinary and sordid doings of the Corleone family.

Puzo writes with little perspective beyone that of his characters. Their intricate decisions and thoughts are broken down on the page, and the reader is commensurately immersed in the world in which every character is. The reader remains an outsider. I think this is a vital approach to understanding such a culture that would seem primitive if the reader was plunged head-first. I think if I had not seen the movie the end would have been a lot more powerful. All the themes of loyalty, responsibility, and family shed their abstraction as Michael Corleone, the man who seemed the least likely gangster of the characters, realizes his place at the head of his family.

Its hard to judge having seen the movie version many times. The movie realized the story in a much more compelling manner than the book could. A good read for fans of the movie all the same.