THE GRAND GENNARO

Here's The Great Gatsby of Little Italy -- a book that succeeds in doing for New York's foreign section (one of many) what Zara's Blessed is the Man does for Chicago. A revealing and warmly colorful and dramatic picture of the intimate life of Italian immigrants, coming hopefully to a new land, and pushed down into sordid, crowded city slums, struggling to make enough pennies to keep the wolf away, with here and there the stimulus of one of their number ""making America"" in a big way. Such a one is Gennaro -- and he goes through most of his life, bragging and stepping on the necks of others in his upward rise, until he is king of the rag men. A first rate job -- and it's a new angle. Not depressingly sordid -- but a vital slice out of city life.