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The Godfather: 50th Anniversary Edition Kindle Edition
Mario Puzo’s classic saga of an American crime family that became a global phenomenon—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
With its brilliant and brutal portrayal of the Corleone family, The Godfather burned its way into our national consciousness. This unforgettable saga of crime and corruption, passion and loyalty continues to stand the test of time, as the definitive novel of the Mafia underworld.
A #1 New York Times bestseller in 1969, Mario Puzo’s epic was turned into the incomparable film of the same name, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is the original classic that has been often imitated, but never matched. A tale of family and society, law and order, obedience and rebellion, it reveals the dark passions of human nature played out against a backdrop of the American dream.
With a Note from Anthony Puzo and an Afterword by Robert J. Thompson
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBerkley
- Publication dateOctober 4, 2005
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size2415 KB
- The Don always taught that when a man was generous, he must show the generosity as personal.Highlighted by 1,802 Kindle readers
- “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”Highlighted by 1,643 Kindle readers
- But great men are not born great, they grow great, and so it was with Vito Corleone.Highlighted by 1,495 Kindle readers
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Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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“You can’t stop reading it, and you’ll find it hard to stop dreaming about it.”—New York Magazine
From the Publisher
About the Author
When his books made little money despite being critically acclaimed, he vowed to write a bestseller. The Godfather (1969) was an enormous success. He collaborated with director Francis Ford Coppola on the screenplays for all three Godfather movies and won Academy Awards for both The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). He also collaborated on the scripts for such films as Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), and The Cotton Club (1984). He continued to write phenomenally successful novels, Including Fools Die (1978), The Sicilian (1984), The Fourth K (1991), and The Last Don (1996). Mario Puzo died on July 2, 1999. His final novel, Omerta, was published in 2000.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
-Balzac
Chapter 1
Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.
The judge, a formidably heavy-featured man, rolled up the sleeves of his black robe as if to physically chastise the two young men standing before the bench. His face was cold with majestic contempt. But there was something false in all this that Amerigo Bonasera sensed but did not yet understand.
"You acted like the worst kind of degenerates," the judge said harshly. Yes, yes, thought Amerigo Bonasera. Animals. Animals. The two young men, glossy hair crew cut, scrubbed clean-cut faces composed into humble contrition, bowed their heads in submission.
The judge went on. "You acted like wild beasts in a jungle and you are fortunate you did not sexually molest that poor girl or I'd put you behind bars for twenty years." The judge paused, his eyes beneath impressively thick brows flickered slyly toward the sallow-faced Amerigo Bonasera, then lowered to a stack of probation reports before him. He frowned and shrugged as if convinced against his own natural desire. He spoke again.
"But because of your youth, your clean records, because of your fine families, and because the law in its majesty does not seek vengeance, I hereby sentence you to three years' confinement to the penitentiary. Sentence to be suspended."
Only forty years of professional mourning kept the overwhelming fru-stration and hatred from showing on Amerigo Bonasera's face. His beautiful young daughter was still in the hospital with her broken jaw wired together; and now these two animales went free? It had all been a farce. He watched the happy parents cluster around their darling sons. Oh, they were all happy now, they were smiling now.
The black bile, sourly bitter, rose in Bonasera's throat, overflowed through tightly clenched teeth. He used his white linen pocket handkerchief and held it against his lips. He was standing so when the two young men strode freely up the aisle, confident and cool-eyed, smiling, not giving him so much as a glance. He let them pass without saying a word, pressing the fresh linen against his mouth.
The parents of the animales were coming by now, two men and two women his age but more American in their dress. They glanced at him, shamefaced, yet in their eyes was an odd, triumphant defiance.
Out of control, Bonasera leaned forward toward the aisle and shouted hoarsely, "You will weep as I have wept-I will make you weep as your children make me weep"-the linen at his eyes now. The defense attorneys bringing up the rear swept their clients forward in a tight little band, enveloping the two young men, who had started back down the aisle as if to protect their parents. A huge bailiff moved quickly to block the row in which Bonasera stood. But it was not necessary.
All his years in America, Amerigo Bonasera had trusted in law and order. And he had prospered thereby. Now, though his brain smoked with hatred, though wild visions of buying a gun and killing the two young men jangled the very bones of his skull, Bonasera turned to his still uncomprehending wife and explained to her, "They have made fools of us." He paused and then made his decision, no longer fearing the cost. "For justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone."
In a garishly decorated Los Angeles hotel suite, Johnny
Fontane was as jealously drunk as any ordinary husband. Sprawled on a red couch, he drank straight from the bottle of scotch in his hand, then washed the taste away by dunking his mouth in a crystal bucket of ice cubes and water. It was four in the morning and he was spinning drunken fantasies of murdering his trampy wife when she got home. If she ever did come home. It was too late to call his first wife and ask about the kids and he felt funny about calling any of his friends now that his career was plunging downhill. There had been a time when they would have been delighted, flattered by his calling them at four in the morning but now he bored them. He could even smile a little to himself as he thought that on the way up Johnny Fontane's troubles had fascinated some of the greatest female stars in America.
Gulping at his bottle of scotch, he heard finally his wife's key in the door, but he kept drinking until she walked into the room and stood before him. She was to him so very beautiful, the angelic face, soulful violet eyes, the delicately fragile but perfectly formed body. On the screen her beauty was magnified, spiritualized. A hundred million men all over the world were in love with the face of Margot Ashton. And paid to see it on the screen.
"Where the hell were you?" Johnny Fontane asked.
"Out fucking," she said.
She had misjudged his drunkenness. He sprang over the cocktail table and grabbed her by the throat. But close up to that magical face, the lovely violet eyes, he lost his anger and became helpless again. She made the mistake of smiling mockingly, saw his fist draw back. She screamed, "Johnny, not in the face, I'm making a picture."
She was laughing. He punched her in the stomach and she fell to the floor. He fell on top of her. He could smell her fragrant breath as she gasped for air. He punched her on the arms and on the thigh muscles of her silky tanned legs. He beat her as he had beaten snotty smaller kids long ago when he had been a tough teenager in New York's Hell's Kitchen. A painful punishment that would leave no lasting disfigurement of loosened teeth or broken nose.
But he was not hitting her hard enough. He couldn't. And she was giggling at him. Spread-eagled on the floor, her brocaded gown hitched up above her thighs, she taunted him between giggles. "Come on, stick it in. Stick it in, Johnny, that's what you really want."
Johnny Fontane got up. He hated the woman on the floor but her beauty was a magic shield. Margot rolled away, and in a dancer's spring was on her feet facing him. She went into a childish mocking dance and chanted, "Johnny never hurt me, Johnny never hurt me." Then almost sadly with grave beauty she said, "You poor silly bastard, giving me cramps like a kid. Ah, Johnny, you always will be a dumb romantic guinea, you even make love like a kid. You still think screwing is really like those dopey songs you used to sing." She shook her head and said, "Poor Johnny. Goodbye, Johnny." She walked into the bedroom and he heard her turn the key in the lock.
Johnny sat on the floor with his face in his hands. The sick, humiliating despair overwhelmed him. And then the gutter toughness that had helped him survive the jungle of Hollywood made him pick up the phone and call for a car to take him to the airport. There was one person who could save him. He would go back to New York. He would go back to the one man with the power, the wisdom he needed and a love he still trusted. His Godfather Corleone.
The baker, Nazorine, pudgy and crusty as his great Italian loaves, still dusty with flour, scowled at his wife, his nubile daughter, Katherine, and his baker's helper, Enzo. Enzo had changed into his prisoner-of-war uniform with its green-lettered armband and was terrified that this scene would make him late reporting back to Governor's Island. One of the many thousands of Italian Army prisoners paroled daily to work in the American economy, he lived in constant fear of that parole being revoked. And so the little comedy being played now was, for him, a serious business.
Nazorine asked fiercely, "Have you dishonored my family? Have you given my daughter a little package to remember you by now that the war is over and you know America will kick your ass back to your village full of shit in Sicily?"
Enzo, a very short, strongly built boy, put his hand over his heart and said almost in tears, yet cleverly, "Padrone, I swear by the Holy Virgin I have never taken advantage of your kindness. I love your daughter with all respect. I ask for her hand with all respect. I know I have no right, but if they send me back to Italy I can never come back to America. I will never be able to marry Katherine."
Nazorine's wife, Filomena, spoke to the point. "Stop all this foolishness," she said to her pudgy husband. "You know what you must do. Keep Enzo here, send him to hide with our cousins in Long Island."
Katherine was weeping. She was already plump, homely and sprouting a faint moustache. She would never get a husband as handsome as Enzo, never find another man who touched her body in secret places with such respectful love. "I'll go and live in Italy," she screamed at her father. "I'll run away if you don't keep Enzo here."
Nazorine glanced at her shrewdly. She was a "hot number," this daughter of his. He had seen her brush her swelling buttocks against Enzo's front when the baker's helper squeezed behind her to fill the counter baskets with hot loaves from the oven. The young rascal's hot loaf would be in her oven, Nazorine thought lewdly, if proper steps were not taken. Enzo must be kept in America and be made an American citizen. And there was only one man who could arrange such an affair. The Godfather. Don Corleone.
All of these people and many others received engraved invitations to the wedding of Miss Constanzia Corleone, to be celebrated on the last Saturday in August 1945. The father of the bride, Don Vito Corleone, never forgot his old friends and neighbors though he himself now lived in a huge house on Long Island. The reception would be held in that house and the festivities would go on all day. There was no doubt it would be a momentous occasion. The war with the Japanese had just ended so there would not be any nagging fear for their sons fighting in the Army to cloud these festivities. A wedding was just what people needed to show their joy.
And so on that Saturday morning the friends of Don Corleone streamed out of New York City to do him honor. They bore cream-colored
envelopes stuffed with cash as bridal gifts, no checks. Inside each envelope a card established the identity of the giver and the measure of his respect for the Godfather. A respect truly earned.
Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not
even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man's troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution of that man's woe. His reward? Friendship, the respectful title of "Don," and sometimes the more affectionate salutation of "Godfather." And perhaps, to show respect only, never for profit, some humble gift-a gallon of homemade wine or a basket of peppered taralles specially baked to grace his Christmas table. It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service.
Now on this great day, his daughter's wedding day, Don Vito Corleone stood in the doorway of his Long Beach home to greet his guests, all of them known, all of them trusted. Many of them owed their good fortune in life to the Don and on this intimate occasion felt free to call him "Godfather" to his face. Even the people performing festal services were his friends. The bartender was an old comrade whose gift was all the wedding liquors and his own expert skills. The waiters were the friends of Don Corleone's sons. The food on the garden picnic tables had been cooked by the Don's wife and her friends and the gaily festooned one-acre garden itself had been decorated by the young girl-chums of the bride.
Don Corleone received everyone-rich and poor, powerful and humble-with an equal show of love. He slighted no one. That was his character. And the guests so exclaimed at how well he looked in his tux that an inexperienced observer might easily have thought the Don himself was the lucky groom.
Standing at the door with him were two of his three sons. The eldest,
baptized Santino but called Sonny by everyone except his father, was looked at askance by the older Italian men; with admiration by the younger. Sonny Corleone was tall for a first-generation American of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his crop of bushy, curly hair made him look even taller. His face was that of a gross Cupid, the features even but the bow-shaped lips thickly sensual, the dimpled cleft chin in some curious way obscene. He was built as powerfully as a bull and it was common knowledge that he was so generously endowed by nature that his martyred wife feared the marriage bed as unbelievers once feared the rack. It was whispered that when as a youth he had visited houses of ill fame, even the most hardened and fearless putain, after an awed inspection of his massive organ, demanded double price.
Here at the wedding feast, some young matrons, wide-hipped, wide-mouthed, measured Sonny Corleone with coolly confident eyes. But on this particular day they were wasting their time. Sonny Corleone, despite the presence of his wife and three small children, had plans for his sister's maid of honor, Lucy Mancini. This young girl, fully aware, sat at a garden table in her pink formal gown, a tiara of flowers in her glossy black hair. She had flirted with Sonny in the past week of rehearsals and squeezed his hand that morning at the altar. A maiden could do no more.
She did not care that he would never be the great man his father had proved to be. Sonny Corleone had strength, he had courage. He was generous and his heart was admitted to be as big as his organ. Yet he did not have his father's humility but instead a quick, hot temper that led him into errors of judgment. Though he was a great help in his father's business, there were many who doubted that he would become the heir to it.
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Product details
- ASIN : B0022Q8CSC
- Publisher : Berkley; Reissue edition (October 4, 2005)
- Publication date : October 4, 2005
- Language : English
- File size : 2415 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 433 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,230 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #42 in Classic American Fiction
- #50 in Education & Reference (Kindle Store)
- #65 in Classic American Literature
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Mario Gianluigi Puzo (/ˈpuːzoʊ/; Italian: [ˈmaːrjo ˈpuddzo]; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author, screenwriter and journalist. He is known for his crime novels about the Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a three-part film saga directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film. His last novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.
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(SPOILERS AHEAD - READER, BEWARE!) I love stories about the Mafia. From the families depicted on Law and Order to true crime documentaries, I love it all. Being a film buff as well, I wanted to see the Coppola classic The Godfather, but I felt like I should read the source material first. What Puzo excels at is realism. The majority of his characters feel very human, with all of the virtues and faults you'd expect in a novel with such a large cast. His descriptions of sex are passionate and deliciously reverent, and the moments where he allows himself to be less prosy are splendidly vibrant. He also makes characters with different (or non-existent) moral codes compelling. For example, I was very invested in and entertained by Sonny Corleone, though he's not a person I'd like in real life, and his death was one of my least favorite pieces of the story.
Some of the weaknesses in the novel, I feel, are the somewhat clumsy integration of Puzo's sociopolitical and moral philosophy into the narrative, and an occasionally meandering plot. The first of those happens most often through large monologues of either Don Corleone and his son Michael. Puzo attempts to elevate seemingly business-focused and down-to-earth conversations into meditations on the justice of the Family's ethical code, the injustice of Western models of governance, the nature of Sicilian people and the characteristics of ideal men and women. The second lies in the fact that there are many threads of story going at any one time, but they don't all have a satisfying conclusion; the central arc comes to a close, but the situation of several important characters isn't addressed in the end, so there's very little payoff for many pages of storytelling and emotional investment.
The biggest issues I had, as a modern reader with very liberal beliefs, were not necessarily of Puzo's style. I understand that the book was written in 1969 and set in the 1940s and 1950s, so I didn't expect it to be the most progressive text. Nevertheless, I want to put forward the following.
CONTENT WARNINGS: graphic violence, sexual assault, racism, sexism, domestic violence
I expected some of these, but good lord. The violence is not graphic in the same way as the violence of authors like James Patterson, but it is still explicit and can be shocking to those unaccustomed to crime novels. Descriptions of the decapitated horse head and of the physical responses of someone being garroted are the most graphic, but glossing over those portions of text won't reduce your experience of the plot so no worries, fellow squeamish folk! (Sidenote: I found the killing of the horse exceptionally sad. Puzo goes out of his way to describe in an earlier scene how beautiful and dignified the horse is, and the destruction of such a marvelous living thing broke my heart. So if you're a softy like me, be prepared.) One other thing to beware of: the killer Luca Brasi is described throughout most of the book as unusually violent (to such an extent that other Family members are actively terrified of him), and his capacity for violence is stated as being ultimately confirmed by a story that few in the Family know and that none of those will tell Michael Corleone. The story is later revealed to be him forcing a midwife at gunpoint to murder his newborn child by placing it in a furnace. It is obviously deeply upsetting, and it's not treated with the horror that it should be.
There is no actual incident of sexual assault in the book, but one of the first arcs we're introduced to is a man seeking Don Corleone's help in revenging himself on two men who attempted to rape his daughter and beat her severely when she resisted. Sexual violence is mentioned in other contexts, largely as a danger faced by economically disadvantaged women. Racism in The Godfather is mostly directed at non-Italians and black people, and an Italian character is at least once referred to by the slur d*go (evolved from deliberate mispronunciation of the common Spanish/Italian name Diego). Black people are referred to as "savages" and characterized as violent drug addicts or abused promiscuous women/sex workers.
I expected a lot of that, but the sexism of the book was way more than I was prepared for. Female characters, even those through whose eyes we view portions of the story, are largely appendages to the male characters and are depicted exclusively in the context of their romantic/sexual relationships with men of the Corleone Family. The possessive, patronizing way that the men treat women in the text is "justified" through lengthy asides about how the man in question just loves the woman so much or how it's the Sicilian way or how it's for the women's own protection. This also includes the text's treatment of domestic violence. When Connie Corleone tells her parents about her husband's violent physical abuse, they tell her that she has to work it out herself because the relationship between a husband and wife is no one else's business. Her abuse is normalized and only included in the text because of the effect it produces in her brother and has on her husband. No one checks in with the female characters when they experience trauma, and they are explicitly acknowledged as not being equal partners to their husbands or other male family members (which the story justifies by ascribing it to the inability of the men to divulge the details of Cosa Nostra to their spouses and the desire to keep women and children in the "protected" position of noncombatants). Sex workers and other female characters who retain control over their sexual agency are largely dismissed and judged as being of little value, all while the male characters indulge themselves in the custom of those sex workers or have mountains of one-off sexual relationships themselves.
The most egregious example of sexism in the story for me, though, was when Michael Corleone marries a young woman (Apollonia) while hiding in Sicily. First, she is explicitly acknowledged in the text as being a teenager but possessing the body and attractiveness of an adult (which is just disgusting), so Michael has no business getting into a relationship with her. Second, he decides that he wants to marry this girl after he is "struck by the thunderbolt", which is basically lusting so hard after someone that you turn into a possessive weirdo. From the moment he talks with her father, it is heavily implied that this marriage is going to happen because of Michael's powerful family connections and personal wealth; there's no room made for the possibility that Apollonia may not want to marry this older stranger. She does seem to really fall for him, but that is just convenient, not necessary for the sealing of this contract. (Sidenote: I understand the historical context of marriage, but this storyline was creepy in a narrative that also talks about the beautiful connection between Michael and his other romantic interest. That coupling was not countenanced by his family at first, but the story lauds Michael's decision to choose loyalty to his heart rather than his family's traditions. So clearly not every marriage is a simple financial arrangement. Apollonia being a teenager only makes this whole thing worse.) Third, she says exactly 1 word of dialogue, which is a demure expression of thanks for a gift from Michael. Fourth, about 85% of the descriptions of her in the text concern her physicality and the things Michael finds sexy about her, instead of giving her any kind of personality. Finally, it's obvious that her role in the story is to be sexually enticing, to embody the "perfect" Sicilian young woman, and to give Michael's character arc another shove with her violent death. I really felt for her, and her descriptions made her sound like a really pleasant person who absolutely deserved a better life than the one she got.
Despite all of that problematic content, I enjoyed the story overall, and I felt that it was a very different perspective on the intent and behavior of criminals than I'd experienced before. The careful, calculated relationships between most of the characters were fascinating to explore, and the brilliance of Don Corleone is riveting. I enjoyed the plot twists, too, mostly because I couldn't see them coming. Some of the Don's lines are deliciously memorable, and his characterization is endlessly engrossing, mostly due to the rigid moral code he possesses and the way he asserts his power in all of his relationships. I am more eager than ever to see the films!
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The first thing to say is, it is beautifully written and with affinity for each of the main characters and their point of view, as they enter the story. I cannot say how much of the three dimensionality - or sometimes four-dimensionality - of the characters I feel is due to the book itself, or my familiarity with the films; it can't be separated now.
That leads me on to the next thing I must mention, which is the first thing I noticed on reading this book. The first part of the book and the first part of the film are almost identical, so I was in familiar territory. We are at Connie's wedding party, in the grounds of the Corleone family estate and it is almost as if, like 2001, the two were written synonymously. I have to say that this makes the film enormously clever, I feel, to pull off such a thing - but then, Mario Puzo was heavily involved in the making of the film - and I might have felt very differently about it, if I had read the book first (I hated Disney's Winnie the Pooh!).
The book, however, contains a lot of detail that is not in the film - a whole different dimension to both Johnny Fontane, and Lucy Mancini (Sonny's Mistress) and, even having seen the films many times, I still thoroughly enjoyed it - in fact, it was comforting to have ready made images I could call up, for these characters, which did not clash with the book in any way.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable, well-written book, with few grammatical errors and I am on to the next one now, while my husband, who has been anxiously waiting in the wings, for me to finish this one, commences to devour it, probably in half the time it took me!
Si alguien duda si leer este libro o no, he de decirle que es uno de mis favoritos, es un libro que hay que experimentar.