Puzo’s fans will appreciate this warm portrait.
An exploration of the life and work of Mario Puzo (1920-1999).
In 1969, 14 years after his first novel appeared—and quietly disappeared—Puzo catapulted to fame with the publication of The Godfather. Drawing on Puzo’s autobiographical nonfiction, essays, published interviews, and memoirs by his friends and fellow writers, Moore (For Paris—With Love & Squalor, 2017) fashions an admiring portrait of the self-described “working-class novelist” whose spectacular success ended years of professional disappointment. Puzo grew up poor, amid “the grimy odors, the sooty filth, and the oily stenches” of Manhattan. Summers in New Hampshire, courtesy of the Fresh Air Fund, and sports and arts programs at the Hudson Guild Settlement House nourished his spirit. Sports, cards, and voracious reading became his choice activities. His future, though, seemed bleak to him, and he described the period between 18 and 21 as unremittingly miserable. In 1941, he was “delighted,” he admitted, to join the Army. When the war was over, he stayed on in the military in Germany and married a German woman. Postwar Europe, Moore observes, “was rife with intrigue, dangerous in ways that an ambitious writer would appreciate for sheer narrative intensity.” That atmosphere found its way into Puzo’s first novel, The Dark Arena, garnering critical praise but “general indifference” from readers. Moore chronicles Puzo’s money problems (with a wife and five children to support), affinity for gambling, and work frustrations. In 1962, he resigned from a government job to become a full-time staff writer at the Magazine Management Company, where he would turn out 30,000-40,000 words per month under various pen names before going home to write his own novels. Hard as he worked, though, he was always in debt—until he took an editor’s advice to write about “that Mafia stuff” that had appeared in some of his stories. It was advice well-taken: Readers made The Godfathera bestseller for 67 weeks, and it has lived on as a movie and sequels.
Puzo’s fans will appreciate this warm portrait.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-942762-63-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Heliotrope Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
The world didn't lose a great journalist when Gloria Steinem focused her energies on feminist activism—but because she was a working journalist (and, from 1968, political columnist for first-person-prone New York magazine), the light bulb goes on right here. This first collection of her writings (also, her first book) leads off with autobiographical comments: on the speaking she's done instead of writing, and how difficult ("a major hurdle in my life") and ultimately rewarding it was (kudos on both scores to her black lecture partners); on her earlier writing career, or the frustrations of frivolous, "girl reporter" assignments; on her first stabs at "telling the truth in public" and other outcomes of a "growing consciousness." From the pre-feminist writing, she includes only "I Was a Playboy Bunny"—a 1963 "exposÉ" of the crippling grind, the miserable pay, the sexual harassment (said a co-worker: "If you can type, what the hell do you want to be a Bunny for?")—and the first parts of a section of campaign reports, 1965-72. It's there, in 1968, that the "Feminist Realization" (born of covering women's meetings) hits home—eliciting the kind of protest that would quickly become a groundswell: "Six months ago I would have been honored by McGovern's invitation to a 'serious' (i.e., male and therefore grownup) political meeting, but full of doubt about whether I could contribute in a 'serious' (male) way. . . . I couldn't admit that any power relationship in life is political: therefore politics for women may be who's doing the dishes, or who's getting paid half the wages that a man would get for the same job, or who's expected to take the roles of service and support everywhere, including in political campaigns." A dozen pages later, after the 1972 Democratic Convention (Chisholm for president, Farenthold for V.P.): "Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers, or mindless policy-makers. . . ." That sense of being in at the creation is diluted by the non-chronological arrangement of the pieces in the remaining two-thirds of the book—pieces that are essentially feminist polemics whether the subject is food (women's smaller share or "Erotica vs. Pornography," (good) Jackie Kennedy or the (bad) heroine of Sophie's Choice. A partial exception is "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)," Steinem's previously unpublished memoir of her mentally-disturbed mother—whom she regards as a victim but also celebrates as a life-force. Still, her particular talent has been for perceiving the feminist angle, in her own writing and for Ms., and spreading that recognition. If some of the ideas here sound hackneyed, she has honest claim to them.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0452257107
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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