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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Michael’s birth itself was as painless as such a thing might ever be. He had ivory skin, long black eyelashes, and a head of lustrous hair. When the midwife spanked him, he took a deep breath but didn’t cry. She sighed like a girl at a Valentino movie. The moment he was at his mother’s breast, he was her favorite child. Vito had barely crossed the threshold to the room when he saw Michael’s noble features. The baby was the image of Vito’s own father, who’d fought alongside Garibaldi. Vito dropped to his knees and wept with joy.

The next day, thoughts of his father’s beloved olive grove inspired Vito to go into the olive oil business. Tessio and Clemenza would be his salesmen. Prohibition-which provided other profitable uses for their delivery trucks-was another stroke of luck that came into the world about the same time as Michael Corleone. Soon they were all rich.

Michael’s babyhood passed without his temperature ever climbing above ninety-eight. It was often cooler. He had a confidence about him, as if he knew people would love him and do what needed to be done and saw no need to make a fuss. His christening party was held in the street, which the police closed as a favor to the generous young importer. It seemed every Italian in New York was there. Michael’s godfather, the saturnine Tessio, spent the afternoon making silly faces at the baby, who was already able to smile. It was Vito’s smile, drained of menace.

After a year or so, the older boys saw that Michael had usurped them and become the favorite of both parents. Fredo reacted by putting mice in the baby’s cradle and, briefly, regressing into a period of bed-wetting. Once he even went to school and told everyone his baby brother had been sliced in two by the cowcatcher of the Eleventh Avenue freight train.

Sonny took bolder action, complicating Michael’s claim on Vito’s affections by bringing home a new rival, one Sonny chose himself-a sick and filthy kid whose parents had died of drink. At the age of twelve he’d been on the street, living by his wits-which, it turned out, were considerable. His name was Tom Hagen. Sonny ceded his narrow bed to his orphaned friend and slept on the floor. No one discussed making this arrangement permanent. But like so many of the Don’s affairs, a need presented itself and with a minimum of words was resolved.

Michael’s earliest memory was of the day his family moved to the Bronx. He was three. His mother was on the stoop, hugging neighbors good-bye and crying just as hard as baby Connie. Tom and Sonny must have been up at the new apartment. Michael was in the car with his father and a driver. Fredo stood at the curb, looking toward the trains. “What’s wrong?” Vito shouted. Fredo wanted to play cowboy. Sonny got to do it at least a hundred times. Fredo hadn’t done it once, and now they were leaving the neighborhood. Vito saw the misery on Fredo’s face. He took Michael by one hand and Fredo by the other and marched them down the narrow street. The man with the horse saw Vito, and a moment later Fredo was in the saddle, waiting for a train. When one appeared in the distance, Vito hoisted Michael onto his shoulders. Fredo rode the horse across the tracks, screaming his warnings, happy and unafraid.

The Corleones’ new apartment was in the Belmont section of the Bronx, on the second floor of an eight-story redbrick building. The apartment itself was humble but had a new icebox, good heat, and enough space for everyone. Vito owned the whole building, though so discreetly not even the super knew it. To young Michael, Belmont seemed like paradise. The streets were filled with boys playing stickball and the cries of men with laden pushcarts. The air shimmered with the tang of simmering onions and the sugary haze of rising breads. After supper, women carried chairs down to the sidewalks and gossiped away the twilight. Men shouted affectionate taunts to one another. There were more Italians in Belmont than in most of the towns they’d originally come from. They’d go years at a time without leaving the borough.

Outside the Corleones’ apartment was an iron fire escape. On hot nights they slept on it, an adventure tempered only when the wind shifted and sent the smell from the Bronx Zoo wafting down Arthur Avenue. “Enough,” Vito would say to his complaining children. “That zoo? It was built by Italians. What you smell is the fruit of their labor. How can a child of mine refuse fruit, which is a gift from God?” The others still complained sometimes, but not Michael. There were lions in that zoo, too. He loved lions. The Corleones. The lionhearted.

The Corleones became active in their new church. At first even Vito attended. Fredo went with his mother to Mass almost every day. When he was ten, he stood up at supper and announced that he’d had a talk with Father Stefano, his mother’s favorite celebrant and also his boxing coach, and decided to become a priest. The family exploded in congratulations. That night, Michael sat on the fire escape and watched his mother parade Fredo around the neighborhood. By the time Fredo returned, his face was covered with smeared lipstick.

At school, when Michael’s friends practiced that age-old ritual of bragging about their father, Michael would walk away. He’d been raised not to boast. He also had no need for it. Even the worst schoolyard bully knew that Michael’s quiet father was a man of respect. When Vito Corleone walked down the street, people backed away, almost bowing, as if he were a king.

One night at dinner, when Michael was six, there was a knock at the door. It was Peter Clemenza. He apologized for interrupting dinner and asked to have a word with Vito alone. Moments later, from behind the locked parlor door, Vito began to yell in Sicilian dialect, which Michael understood, but imperfectly. His father’s rage was clear enough. Michael’s mother fed olives and calamari to Connie and pretended to be oblivious. Tom smirked and shook his head. “It’s Sonny,” Tom said. Sonny wasn’t at dinner-which had become less and less unusual-but Tom’s smirk seemed to indicate that nothing truly grave had befallen him.

Still, Michael was terrified. Only Sonny-and, years later, Michael-would ever provoke Vito Corleone enough to shatter his legendary patience and reserve. There was no greater measure of the depth of his love for them. If the dead could speak, many would testify that it was Vito’s patience and reserve a person should fear most.

“What’d he do?” Michael said.

“Some stupid cafone stunt,” Tom said. “Typical Sonny.”

Tom and Sonny were both students at Fordham Prep. Since the move they’d run with different crowds. Tom was on the tennis team and an honor student. Perhaps because he wasn’t really a member of the family, perhaps out of gratitude, he’d quietly become the perfect son-the smartest, the most loyal, the best behaved, the most ambitious, and, at the same time, the most humble. The most ardent student of Vito’s code of behavior, he spoke Italian like a native, and was in every way but blood the most Sicilian.

As for Sonny, he’d been kicked off the football team after shouting at the coach (when Sonny had asked his father to intercede, Vito slapped the boy and said nothing). He sneaked bootleg gin and slipped into Harlem to hear jazz. Even at sixteen, Sonny was already getting a reputation as a ladies’ man, and not only from girls his age.

“What kind of stupid cafone stunt?” Michael asked Tom.

“A rubar poco si va in galera, a rubar tanto si fa carriera.” Steal a little, go to jail; steal a lot, make a career of it. “Sonny and two idiots he thinks are his friends pulled a stickup-”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Carmela clamped her hands over Connie’s ears. “Enough!”

The parlor door opened. Vito was shaking, red-faced, visibly angry. He and Clemenza left without saying a word. Connie broke into tears. Michael forced himself not to follow suit.

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