Salon.com > Albert Mobilio

Mario Puzo

Fri, 09 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

One of the New York tabloids caught the near biblical-sounding line of succession: "The Father of the Godfather Dead at 78." Mario Puzo may have written a half-dozen other novels and several screenplays, but his 1969 novel "The Godfather" and its film adaptation, which he co-wrote with Francis Ford Coppola, are the works for which he will be long remembered. After initial publication and for many years afterward, "The Godfather's" familiar black cover with its depiction of a puppeteer's hand was ubiquitous -- the novel sold 21 million copies before the film version appeared. The film, too, was an unprecedented success -- it broke box-office records and won several Academy Awards.

Puzo's epic tale not only made truckloads of money but it also -- particularly the film adaptation -- garnered critical plaudits; it is routinely listed among the all-time top 10 American movies. An ur-American narrative whose appeal crossed all boundaries, Puzo's saga of a Mafia family's inter-generational struggle is probably, pace Huck Finn, the most familiar story in American culture, and Don Vito Corleone surely keeps company with Huck and Jay Gatsby as one of the most indelible icons of American fiction. The first real "blockbuster" book, Puzo's lurid peek at everyday life in gangland eventually sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and, many argue, changed the dynamics of the publishing business.

Rough trade show

Tue, 20 Apr 1999 18:53:00 +0000

Soft lights, soft music. A glass of champagne, a spiked dog
collar and an enema. If this sounds like a sexy combination to you,
keep a voyeuristic eye out for Erotica USA, a sex biz trade show coming
soon to a town near you. The Erotica show just closed in New York, where
it sparked complaints from expected sources like New York's hall-monitor mayor
and the Christian Coalition. Both denounced the use of the Jacob Javits
Center, a government-owned convention hall, as a site for the
propagation of, well, propagation. Or at least the urge behind it.

To spank or not to spank

Wed, 07 Oct 1998 10:02:00 +0000

A lifetime ago I was sitting at Sunday dinner with my parents. My mother and I squabbled while my father ate in silence. Seized with that squeaky truculence typical of most 10-year-old boys, I let fly a particularly nasty remark at my mother, whose hurt and shock I was just beginning to take in when the back of my father's hand exploded against my mouth. Coming from a truck driver and onetime amateur boxer, my dad's cuffing was hardly all he could have mustered, but nonetheless, the blow was a sharp one that fattened my lip and elicited a burst of tears. Of course, my mother leapt up to minister to her baby's wound. My father retreated from the room, embarrassed, my mother would later tell me, for having lost his temper and smacked me so hard. Indeed, it was the only time my father ever hit me with his hands. But mine was still a household where corporal punishment -- meted out with a belt -- was an occasional, though no less memorable, resolution to my boyhood defiance. By current child-rearing standards, I could be called an abused child. According to those standards, my old man shouldn't have belted me, but instead should have signaled a "timeout," during which we might have bid everyone's anger melt away so that afterward we could talk about those disturbing feelings.

Paving the road to Yale — or Palookaville

Mon, 20 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

For most parents in the 1950s and 1960s, picking a school for their children was a snap -- you sent them to the neighborhood joint where all the other kids went. Or maybe, if you were Catholic, you sent them to the parish school. In any event, folks didn't brood long and hard over the decision. School is school, most people figured. As long as it taught you the basics -- how to be on time, conform to social norms and do repetitive work -- it was good enough. And in large measure that was true. Most schools, public and Catholic, did their job -- some better than others, yet such differences, it was generally thought, weren't worth fretting over too much.

Of course, the sanguine ease with which mom and dad once sent us packing off to fascist gym teachers and senile nuns has long since flown out the window. For meritocractic boomers, there is no worry too small, no sacrifice too great when it comes to picking a school for our offspring. And the first big choice is -- public or private?

Shroud of the Gnome

Wed, 04 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

Reader's Digest has long featured a section titled "Life in These United States," which features amusing paragraph-long anecdotes about, say, a misunderstanding with a cashier at the supermarket or how grandma made everyone laugh at someone's graduation. The tales end on mock-wise notes that say, more or less, "Ain't life funny?" Through a transmogrification scholars have yet to trace, these nutshell narratives have come to be the chief influence on mainstream American poetry for the last 20 years: The puzzling incident tied up neatly with a worldly shrug or wistful smile.

James Tate's new collection, "The Shroud of the Gnome" (a title that could have graced a Moody Blues or King Crimson album), is his 12th since winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1967. The book continues his sly subversion of the anecdotal poem. For instance, in "Restless Leg Syndrome," the familiar anecdotal tone of Tate's first lines is quickly punctured by their spiky abstraction: "After the burial/we returned to our units/and assumed our poses./Our posture was the new posture/and not the sick old posture." The speaker then reports on all the items -- an ocelot, a scrimshaw collection, a snuff box -- he uncontrollably kicks, and the poem wraps up with a blow delivered to "the White House we keep on hand/just for situations such as this." This is high-grade nonsense, undiluted by whimsy, and as such affords more head-scratching than knowing nods.

Books: Those Dirty Rotten Taxes

Wed, 04 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

Media Circus: Genteel readers of the world, dig deep

Tue, 16 Dec 1997 20:00:00 +0000

Do you long for the golden age of the Book? That epoch of high-minded literacy when statesmen quoted poetry, great novels were serialized in newspapers and a literary quarterly or two could be found strewn about the sitting room of many homes? Do you decry the triumph of the visual; despise the ubiquity of the screen? If your answer is yes, yes my breasts all perfume yes, then you are perhaps one of that breed more sinn'd against than sinning, the happy few, those who hear the brave music of a distant drum and who get these top-drawer allusions, you are, kind lady, noble sir, a Reader. Not just some abridged-version trifler, but a Reader with iron eyeballs ready to burnish them on a grindstone like Middlemarch just to warm up for Proust.

Toying with us

Tue, 18 Nov 1997 12:16:00 +0000

A kid's consumer soul in full cry is an ugly thing, not
only because his repetitive, snot-choked whine can
feel like a rusty, serrated blade sawing back and
forth in your ear, but because we recognize that
bloody howl as our very own. Indeed, one adequate
definition of adulthood might be the ability to
tamp down and dissemble this clamorous need for
shiny, whirring purchasables. Grown-ups can
rationalize: The box-set of Philly Sound CDs will
boost my husband's spirits, or that tasty linen
jacket will come in handy for job interviews.
But, at bottom, truly, toys are us. Tikes know
this and feel no shame. Their trick is to get
their outsized greed in sync with your guilt
about yours. When that happens, it's two more
babes bound for toy land.

“American Junk”

Sat, 01 Mar 1997 21:33:00 +0000

homo consumerus may know no greater joy than buying -- except, perhaps, throwing away. How sweet to toss out the wooden chair you intended to refinish but instead stacked magazines on, the wicker magazine basket that held old shoes, the shoe tree you regularly strung with damp gym clothes and the 16-volume 1959 encyclopedia currently divided to serve as a pair of matching night stands. Without having spent a cent, your home acquires the sparkle of a fresh purchase. (All right, so you can't look up Khrushchev before dozing off anymore.) You not only have more elbow room but, having hauled your castoffs to the local junk shop, you've forged a crucial link in the consumer food chain -- your junk will soon become someone else's treasure.

A flea-market connoisseur, Mary Randolph Carter sorts the treasure from the trash in "American Junk," a handsomely illustrated guide to shiny ceramic dogs, plastic watermelon wedges and paint-by-numbers artwork in sea-shell encrusted frames. (Indeed, the lush color photos of humble tchotchkes suggest that the want of a good camera is the only thing keeping my house out of Architectural Digest.) Carter organizes her junk by genre, with separate chapters on fish replicas, chairs, Western style junk, kitchen stuff, bottles and lampshades. To survey the previously unfathomed variety of, say, fish kitsch is alone worth the price of admission.