Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

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Even before you open the book, the stark red, white and black cover sparks the strains of Nino Rota's "The Godfather Waltz" begin playing in your mind. Mark Winegardner has been granted to task of writing a sequel to Mario Puzo's essential 1969 novel The Godfather, a novel which not only must pick up the story of that book, but must also fit the characters and situations Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, and others traced through three epic films. The result in The Godfather Returns.
Perhaps most of Winegardner's readers will be more familiar with the films than with the novel, which followed several different characters, many of whom, such as Johnny Fontane or Lucy Mancini, are only peripheral to the films. Winegardner returns to Puzo's novel to follow several different characters. Taking a technique for the second film, however, he also moves through time to present Michael Corleone's story before the first film, between the first two films, and between the second and third films.
Winegardner's decisions to fill in the blanks between the films is one of the weaknesses of The Godfather Returns. The films left out much of the empire building Michael had to do between them in his attempt to go legitimate. While Winegardner manages to add interesting layers of intrigue to Michaels' quest, and to the characters who surround him, the novel really works best when the characters are engaging in mafioso wheeling and dealing.
One of the strengths of Puzo's work was the characters he made come to life, and Winegardner does an excellent job not only with the lives of Puzo's characters, but with his own. Just as Puzo eventually picked up the story of Santino's son, Vincent, in "The Godfather, Part III," Winegardner also elects to follow Santino's offspring, in this case his twin daughters, as they take their first steps at breaking from the family business. Fredo, a pivotal character in the first two films, is actually fleshed out in The Godfather Returns, in which Winegardner adds to the appetites he exhibits in the first films and gives a deeper look into his need to become his own man and gain his older brother's approval.
The central character to the novel, however, is Nick Geraci, a member of the Corleone family who, Winegardner reveals, becomes the button man who killed Sal Tessio, his mentor. After proving his loyalty to the Corleones, it is clear that Geraci will eventually turn on the family as he tries to strike out on his own, setting up an eventual confrontation with Michael. Although it is clear Michael will be victorious, the cost of his victory helps build tension.
In many ways, Winegardner manages to recapture the style and spirit of Puzo's original novel. Nevertheless, there is the feeling that something is missing from The Godfather Returns. Winegardner successfully captures every individual aspect of Puzo's work, whether in the original novel or the films, but there is a magic beneath it that is missing. Despite missing the Puzo magic, The Godfather Returns is a welcome reintroduction to the Corleone clan.
Steven H Silver

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“It’s not.” Fredo had onions and red wine on his breath. He’d missed a spot on his neck, shaving. “See, when you’re a pussy hound like Johnny? And all your friends are pussy hounds, too? It’s bound to happen. Believe me. There’s only so much quality pussy on Earth, and eventually the numbers catch up with a guy. You know?”

“In theory,” Hagen said, “yeah. Sure. I know.”

Fredo stepped backward and put his sunglasses back on. “Next time you talk to Mike,” he said, “tell him I got a few more of the details worked out on my idea, all right?”

“C’mon, Fredo. Like I said, I’m out-”

“Just go, goddamn it.” Fredo pointed vaguely toward the ocean. “You need to go, go.”

That night, when Tom Hagen got back to Theresa’s parents’ house in Asbury Park, his sons were rolling around on the tiny front yard, fighting.

He got out of the car. The fight was, apparently, about a girl, someone Andrew had liked first and Frank had kissed. Hagen let it go on for a while, but when he saw Theresa coming through the front door onto the porch he stuck his fingers in his mouth, whistled, then walked into the middle of the fight and separated them. He ordered them to get in the car and then went inside and got his watch. Gianna was watching a TV Western with her grandparents. He picked her up and piled everyone into the car to go get ice cream. “Mom and Dad have ice cream here,” Theresa said, but Tom shot her a look and she went along.

They got to the Dairy Duchess out by the highway just as it closed. Tom Hagen went around to the back door and slipped the owner a fifty, and a few moments later the Hagen family was sitting together at a sticky green picnic table under a yellow vapor light: a family. Gianna-nothing if not her father’s daughter-ate her cone as fastidiously as a charm-school headmistress, not spilling so much as a sprinkle. Theresa’s sundae melted as she dabbed at Andrew’s puffy face with a spit-dampened paper napkin. Andrew had something with a brownie inside. Frank wolfed down a banana split in a red plastic boat-shaped dish. Tom just had coffee.

When everyone had finished, Tom Hagen rose and stood at the head of the table and told them they were going to spend the rest of the summer in Washington, as a family. Before school started, they’d all drive back to Nevada together, as a family. When he lost the election to a dead man, as he felt fairly certain he would, they would confront that, too, and how?

Gianna’s hand shot up. “As a family!”

“Attagirl,” he said, kissing her on top of her red head. “I know this hasn’t been easy on any of you. I know that the papers have said some crazy things, and I know people have said things to your face that are worse. But we’re in this together. For now, I am a United States congressman. It’s an honor, a privilege, a miracle, really. An experience I want you all to remember for the rest of your lives. Our lives.”

His children turned to look at Theresa. She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “And I’m sorry I haven’t been-”

“No need,” Tom said, waving her off. “I understand completely.”

He didn’t so much forget to tell Theresa and the kids that Fredo loved them as he never found the right moment to do it.

The next day, they got in the car together and drove to D.C. By the time they got there, Ralph had moved Hagen ’s things into a bigger suite and drafted an intern to act as a tour guide. They saw every monument, got behind-the-scenes tours of the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. They went to every museum, and Theresa, who had an art history degree from Syracuse, seemed happier than she’d been in years. Tom and the boys played basketball at the congressional gym and got haircuts from the congressional barber.

Ralph even arranged a visit to the Oval Office, as a family, to meet the president. Better yet, Princess, the president’s collie and a relative of the dog who played Lassie on TV, had given birth to a litter of puppies and the Hagens were going to get one. They walked from their hotel together and were caught without umbrellas in a downpour. In the picture taken by the official White House photographer, the Hagens, as diminished-looking as a family of dripping wet cats, stand flanking the president, who looks like a man trying to smile through an untimely bowel spasm. Little Gianna holds up the puppy-Elvis, they ended up calling it-grimacing, her eyes on the airborne green bean-sized puppy turd that seems destined for the president’s coffee cup.

Tom ordered the biggest print of the photo he could get. The whole family thought it was hilarious. When they went back to Las Vegas, he hung it over the mantelpiece, superseding the Picasso lithograph Theresa had paid a mint for, which looked better in the dining room anyway.

Hagen ’s defeat was one of the most lopsided in the history of the state of Nevada -by far the most decisive victory the dead had ever exacted from the living, at least at the polls.

Again and again-whether at meetings of the Kiwanis, Rotary International, the United Mineworkers, the teachers union, or the Cattlemen’s Association of Nevada- Hagen had proven to be a stiff, humorless, and unpopular speaker. He was an observant Irish-Catholic lawyer in a state run by Baptists and agnostic cowboys. The first time Hagen had really seen his new home state was when he began campaigning in it. There were transients in flea-bitten rescue missions who’d spent more time in Nevada than Tom Hagen. His debate with the congressman’s fierce and tiny widow had been a hideous mistake but one Hagen had made out of desperation, a last-ditch effort, since all indications, even at that point, pointed to him as a hopeless long shot. The same poker-faced persuasiveness Hagen had deployed so effectively in delivering hundreds of unrefusable offers came across on TV as frankly reptilian. Nevada has more species of lizards than any state in America. It’s a place that knows reptilian when it sees it.

Days before the election, a Las Vegas newspaper reported that Congressman Hagen had not only been the attorney for reputed mobster Vito “the Godfather” Corleone, as was widely known, but also his unofficial ward, which was not. According to the story, Vito’s surviving children sometimes even called Hagen their “brother.” Hagen denied nothing. He cited himself as one of the thousands of charitable efforts made by members of the Corleone family, along with the largest wing of the biggest hospital in Nevada and the upcoming art museum, which would soon be the best in the country west of the Rockies and east of California. He showed the reporter a copy of the Saturday Evening Post article in which the Vito Corleone Foundation was called one of the best new philanthropies of the 1950s and a spread in Life that featured Michael Corleone’s heroism during World War II. Hagen pointed out that the Corleones, whom the reporter seemed to regard as criminals, had never, to a person, been convicted of a crime of any sort, not even jaywalking. She asked him about the several times they’d been charged with crimes, especially the late Santino Corleone. Hagen handed her a copy of the U.S. Constitution and recommended that she read the part about being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story pointed out that this turn of phrase appears nowhere in that document.

It was unclear if the reporter or her editor had gotten a tip about Hagen ’s origins. If they had, it could have come from several different people. Friends and neighbors Hagen had known growing up. Fontane, who’d never liked Hagen. The Chicago outfit, who’d been furious about Hagen ’s appointment. Maybe even-given the crazy way he’d been acting lately-Fredo. It was not inconceivable that the reporter might have figured it out for herself. However it had happened, neither Hagen nor Michael chose to waste any time trying to figure out such a puzzle, at least for now. What was the point? Even without that article, Hagen had been destined to lose the election, and badly.

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