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The teachings of Bill Bonanno: A wise-guy way of knowledge People image

What is the sound of one hit man pontificating? Ex-mafiosi Bill Bonanno offers up New Age wisdom, made man-style.

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By Douglas Cruickshank

May 27, 1999 | It's an ancient story, but there's apparently no end to the possibilities for its repackaging: A student of wisdom, a seeker, comes out of the desert (Tucson, Ariz.) to tell his tale to the unenlightened (you and me, especially you). He spins a yarn laced with parable and metaphor, at the center of which is an ethereal, sagacious father figure whose very life is a monument to goodness, a man who has "never lost his ideals, and who by his example and teaching [enables in the seeker] courage, tolerance, strength, and a sense of honor." As our pilgrim -- let's call him Grasshopper, or GH for short -- tells his story, often in lyrical prose, he weaves in the history of his ancestors, their rugged land fraught with turmoil, their struggles, traditions, proud heritage, vision and beliefs.

It's a basic narrative concept that's performed outstandingly in the marketplace over the years, judging by the sales endurance of just two examples: The Bible and Carlos Castaneda's "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge." Now comes "Bound by Honor: A Mafiosi's Story" by Bill Bonanno (whom we've agreed to call GH).

Douglas Cruickshank

Douglas Cruickshank's Rogues' Gallery appears every Thursday. The Raw and the Cooked appears every Saturday.

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First of all, there are three things you should know about our esteemed author-guru:

1) His father, famed gangster Joe Bonanno, now 94, was, GH claims, "the real-life model for Don Corleone in the book and the movie 'The Godfather.'"

2) "I was the model for his son Michael (Corleone)," GH adds. ("But a fiction," our wise guy with the soul of a poet intones, "is only a set of colors, however beautiful, passing over the landscape for a time." Breathe in and think about that for a moment. Now, breathe out and continue.) Grasshopper was also once the acting head of the Bonanno crime family -- before he switched careers to become a New Age author.

3) GH wuvs and idolizes hims daddy, as illustrated by the rhapsodic language of the book's "Acknowledgments" page (see quote in first paragraph).

Next page | The Mafia -- it's not just a job, it's a Higher Path!


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