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What has Puzo been doing all this time? "I've been around," the 75-year-old author says from his Long Island home. "I wanted to write other books, do some screenplays, get in some time living. Unlike some other authors, it takes me five years to write a book, instead of the usual two years that most authors take."
With the release of The Last Don, Puzo hopes to regain some of the momentum lost in his career due to the lackluster sales of his 1991 novel, The Fourth K, a superbly written political morality tale concerning a charismatic President seduced by the lure of power. The novel received so-so notices, generated some talk, but flopped.
His new tale of Mafia life, The Last Don, examines the inner workings of a family, the Clericuzios, who not unlike the Corleones, seek to leave behind the bloody battle for turf, the federal probes into their finances, and businesses for more lucrative, legit enterprises. The head of the family, Domenico Clericuzio, a wily veteran of the days when the mob ruled organized crime uncontested, has turned his attention increasingly westward to Las Vegas since his young nephew, Pippi De Lena rubbed out the vicious Santadio clan one night. As the tentacles of the Clericuzio family stretch from their Long Island compound across the states to Vegas and ultimately Hollywood, the themes of sex, money, murder, and power are played out in grand fashion with the unthinkable finally occurring as family members linked by blood square off against one another.
"In both of my Mafia books, I've wanted to show the parallel between the normal business world and the Mafia," Puzo explains about the ruthless Tinseltown battles depicted in his new book. "Both operate with power. They crush their opposition. Hollywood can be as ruthless as the Mafia and just as clannish. The studios, and seven majors, have guarded their turf well, only allowing one upstart, Orion, to survive in so many years. And Orion was connected to one of the majors. I originally wanted to write about Hollywood but the mob stuff creeped onto the pages. The public loves for me to do the Italian stuff."
When it comes to doing "the Italian stuff," Puzo has few rivals in depicting the shadowy realm of the Sicilian Brotherhood, its code of omerta, its loyalty, its violence. In his depiction of Don Clericuzio, he treats his readers to another graphic portrayal of a powerful man walking a tightrope between his familial obligations and the ruthless operation of his vast empire of crime and vice. There is no room for error or indecision.
"The Dons, both Corleone and Clericuzio, are a collection of traits taken from the old-style Sicilian Dons, more like they operate in the old country, in Sicily," Puzo says. "There, the families were related by blood, and staked out a turf. You asked for permission to move through their territory. Family and blood meant everything. I used Sicilian characters to form my American characters.
"There is no comparison between the mob guys today and the ones from the old school. I detest these new mob guys who become public figures because the very essence of mob power came from never being in the limelight. In fact, the old guys would never pretend that they were important but everyone understood their power, their strength. The old bosses never threatened, they didn't have to do that. They spoke softly. Everybody knew they meant business. A guy like John Gotti (the Godfather of a dominant family recently convicted in New York) wouldn't last a day in Sicily."
What about the killings and the violence connected to many of the families? Puzo laughs knowingly and says: "These guys know how to use violence as a business tool. It was a common marketing tool to persuade and convince your rivals and competitors. There's not a more convincing argument than death."
Much of the violence is connected to the sin of betrayal, the ultimate of cardinal violations, a sin which can never be forgiven. "Betrayal has to do with the contract, the blood oath taken," the author says. "It's like you have a contract with society that if you behave then we'll take care of you. With the mob, its contract protects you against society, against outsiders. Betrayal is always punished severely. An example must be made. No mercy."
For one who understands the sinister nature of evil and crime so well, there is a paradox with Puzo, a man who sees himself as a moralist. "I don't like crime," he notes. "I'm very moralistic against crime. In my work, a significant part of my writing is a commentary on America and its judicial system. It's a ridiculous, unfair system. If you've got money you walk. Justice must be uniform. In the current social contract, the criminal is given more protection than I get and I play by the rules."
Another key component of the Puzo mob epics is his insightful exploration of the emotional bonds of the family unit, the blood ties, the explosive conflicts borne of character and its defects. "The old guys were men of honor," Puzo says. "They had family values, but I don't know if that exists anymore because it was based on a patriarchal view of society. That's all changed as the families became more Americanized. The mob chiefs in the 1930s didn't want their kids to go into the business. They wanted their kids to be better than them, to be more than them. They sent them to West Point, send to the best schools. It was a variation of the American dream."
Puzo's life has been the epitome of the American dream, the child of Italian immigrants reared in the Roaring '20s; the teen years in a tough Hell's Kitchen neighborhood; military duty in World War II, going to school using the GI Bill at City College; and working as an apprentice writer cranking out pulp tales for a slew of now-forgotten magazines. His first novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964) gathered some good reviews, but sales were disappointing. It was with the soaring success of The Godfather (1969) that his writing career was assured, and Hollywood came a-calling.
In the years that followed, Puzo plunged into the screenwriting business, earning quite a reputation for his fine, literate product while putting his stamp on such films as the Godfather trilogy, Superman I, Superman II, Earthquake, Christopher Columbus, and The Cotton Club. Unlike The Last Don's besieged novelist Ernest Vail, who tries to get some leverage with Hollywood by threatening suicide, Puzo says he had been treated just fine and enjoys the process of watching actors bring his word to life.
A Hollywood insider, Puzo knows the glitter and glamour of the dream factories firsthand and laughs at the memories accumulated over more than 25 years of work there. Sinatra once bawled him out for his too-lifelike depiction of the mobbed-up singer Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather. "He completely humiliated me," Puzo remembers. Then there was the writer's lobbying for Marlon Brando to take the part of Don Corleone in the film over the studio's choice of comedian Danny Thomas. "I've written ten movies for Hollywood," Puzo says proudly. "I would never suffer Ernest Vail's fate because I'm essentially a novelist. I'm not dependent on Hollywood for my living so what Hollywood could do just didn't matter to me. Having that outside thing going gave me an edge."
In the old days when Puzo was not writing, he spent his time traveling, partying with friends, playing tennis, and gambling. He recalls Las Vegas from its glory days when the mob ran it before the big corporations muscled in. "Vegas is not like it used to be," Puzo remembers of a gambling town similar to the one in his books. "It was still a frontier town about ten years ago where a guy could get good food, beautiful broads, spend some money, and have a good time. It was total abdication of all responsibility. I recall going out there to see a friend, a former killer who is now a gentleman, and he treated me like a king. Anything I wanted was mine. Today, it's vulgar and has no charm. As the mob guys say, it's got no class."
Slowed by a combination of diabetes and heart problems which required quadruple bypass surgery in 1992, Puzo spends much of his time reading the classics -- Dickens, Thackeray, Galsworthy -- but does not neglect current favorites such as Anita Brookner, Muriel Spark, Fay Weldon, Robert James Waller, and his favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky. There are bits and pieces of Dostoevsky in several of the Puzo books. During the interview, he speaks favorably about three books which he wishes he could have written: The World According to Garp by John Irving, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, and John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . He loves good writing and good storytellers.
With a big publicity tour looming, Puzo realizes he will not have too much time to spend at his 1947 manual typewriter in his study at his Bayshore home. He has never enjoyed being in the public eye but notes that this extensive tour will take him across the country and to Europe. "I'm undisciplined in my work anyway," says the father of five and grandfather of eight. "I don't work every day. I work in spurts and sometimes get hot and write volumes. This will be time away from all that. With this book, I figured I might as well as do the whole bit then I'll settle back to writing. I still have a lot of work to do."
Robert Fleming is a journalist whose most recent book is The Wisdom of the Elders (One World/Ballantine).
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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