The Godfather and American Culture

Chris Messenger

Description

Mario Puzo's The Godfather is an American pop phenomenon whose driving force is reflected not only in book sales and cable television movie marathons but also in such related works as the hit television series The Sopranos. In The Godfather and American Culture, Chris Messenger offers an important and comprehensive study of this classic work of popular fiction and its hold on the American imagination. As Messenger shows, the Corleones have indeed become "our gang," and we see our family business in America reflected in them. Examining The Godfather and its many incarnations within a variety of texts and contexts, Messenger also addresses Puzo's inconsistent affiliation with his Italian heritage, his denial of the multiethnic literary subject, and his decades-long struggle for respect as a writer in contemporary America. The study ultimately offers a way of looking at the much-maligned genre of popular or bestselling fiction itself. By placing both the novel and films within a number of revealing critical situations, Messenger addresses the continuing problem of how we talk about elite and popular fiction in America—and what we mean when we take sides.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART I. Popular Fiction Criticism and American Careers

1. Popular Fiction: Taste, Sentiment, and the Culture of Criticism

2. Mario Puzo: An American Writer's Career

PART II. Reading The Godfather: Critical Strategies and Theoretical Models

3. Bakhtin and Puzo: Authority as the Family Business

4. The Godfather and the Ethnic Ensemble

5. Barthes and Puzo: The Authority of the Signifier

PART III. Positioning The Godfather in American Narrative Study

6. The Godfather and Melodrama: Authorizing the Corleones as American Heroes

7. The Corleones as “Our Gang”: The Godfather Interrogated by Doctorow's Ragtime

8. The American Inadvertent Epic: The Godfather Copied

9. The Godfather Sung by The Sopranos

Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Película fotográfica
• Popular culture
• Visual culture
• History of film
• États-Unis
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791488706
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Godfather and American Culture

SUNY series in Italian/American Culture Fred L. Gardaphe, editor

The Godfather and American Culture

How the Corleones Became “Our Gang”

Chris Messenger

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address the State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Patrick Durocher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Messenger, Christian K., 1943– The Godfather and American culture : how the Corleones became “Our Gang” / Chris Messenger. p. cm. — (SUNY series in Italian/American culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5357-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5358-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Puzo, Mario, 1920– Godfather. 2. Corleone family (Fictitious characters) 3. Italian Americans in literature. 4. Criminals in literature. 5. Family in literature. 6. Mafia in literature. I. Title. II. Series.

PS3566.U9 G63 2002 813'.54—dc21

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Acknowledgments Introduction

PART I Chapter 1

Chapter 2

PART II

Chapter 3

Chapter 4 Chapter 5

PART III

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

Contents

Popular Fiction Criticism and American Careers Popular Fiction: Taste, Sentiment, and the Culture of Criticism Mario Puzo: An American Writer’s Career

ReadingThe Godfather: Critical Strategies and Theoretical Models Bakhtin and Puzo: Authority as the Family Business The Godfatherand the Ethnic Ensemble Barthes and Puzo: The Authority of the Signifier

PositioningThe Godfatherin American Narrative Study The Godfatherand Melodrama: Authorizing the Corleones as American Heroes The Corleones as “Our Gang”:The Godfather Interrogated by Doctorow’sRagtime The American Inadvertent Epic:The Godfather Copied The GodfatherSung byThe Sopranos

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87 107 149

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291 299 317 327

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Acknowledgments

The Godfatherhas been with us in America for a long time, and my interest has been germinating for what seems like decades as well. Puzo’s and Coppola’s texts have been important to my teaching about popular narrative at the University of Illinois at Chicago for fifteen years. I’ve taughtThe Godfatherin many contexts in literature courses to everyone from initially dubious freshmen who thought the university was for other pursuits to Ph.D. candidates who became willing accomplices in critical heists of theories and reading agendas. Thanks also goes to several criti- cal reading friends: Marsha Cassidy, Gloria Nardini, Dina Bozicas, Ma- rina Lewis, and Gina Frangello. Special thanks to John Huntington whose standards dictate that his good estimate of my prose is a sign that I might have nailed it. I benefited from the State University of New York Press readings of Frank Lentricchia and Anthony J. Tamburri. I’ve come full circle with Fred Gardaphe through our mutual interests and manuscripts; having been called upon to perform a major service for each other, we’ve formed a critical family of two. My first pass at the Roland Barthes material in chapter 5 was facili- tated by a Humanities Institute Fellowship at UIC. At State University of New York Press, I would like to thank my acquisitions editor, James Peltz, production editor Marilyn Semerad, marketing manager Patrick Durocher, and freelance copyeditor Camille Hale. I am grateful to Donadio & Olson, Inc. for permission to quote from the works of Mario Puzo. I’ve been surrounded at home byGodfatheraficionados. A part of the Messenger family business has always been good reading, writing, and editing, and I hope I’ve been more benign paterfamilias than Corleone. Thanks, Carrie, Luke, and Ellie. Finally, no book would ever get done without Janet, editor and compass down all the years, who, when I made the offer, did not refuse, and thereby hangs the tale of our life.

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Introduction

The Critic’s Voice in Popular Fiction Study

Several years ago I became captivated by two scenes inThe Godfa- ther,which both fascinated and repelled me. The first is the deathbed scene between Vito Corleone and his dyingconsigliereGenco Abbandando on Connie Corleone’s wedding day; the narrative voice concludes, “as if the Don could truly snatch the life of Genco Abbandando back from that most foul and criminal traitor to man” (48). The second scene shows Hollywood producer Jack Woltz in shock to find the severed head of his stallion, Khartoum, bleeding at the foot of his bed; after he stops scream- ing, he thinks that “there couldn’t be any kind of world if people acted this way” (69). Everything about the two scenes is visceral and immedi- ate, yet their respective conclusions seemed to me oddly ameliorating under strange circumstances of narrative agency. In the Genco scene, Mario Puzo ended with the blandest of universals about the power of death. The Woltz scene ended in either a great hypocrisy or a weak irony or both. I was unable to account for the scenes’ undeniable power, which culminated in capitulation to slack moralizing about “death” or “capital- ism.” Howabouta popular writer who could get me going that way! I found myself writing “Puzo” or “Michael” or “Don C” in the margins of critical pieces I read. Everything I was absorbing about history, ideology, aesthetics, the family, dialogue, monologue, best sellers, elite fiction moved me to wander back toThe Godfatheras site. Some day—and I knew that day might never come—I would be called upon to perform a service, to explain to myself and to a readership the full range of this American popular classic and the contradictions in the long career of its author. The challenge to get The Godfatherand Puzo done right became the offer I couldn’t refuse. Just like Don Corleone’s family and its power,The Godfatherappeared to take root in my critical consciousness. If I had indeed been colonized, like any aware colonial subject, I wanted to convert the language of domination into my own rhetorical capital. In short, I wanted to explain how the Corleones had become “Our Gang” in America, in as complete a takeover as any popu- lar narrative had achieved in the late twentieth century. Certain subjects kept posing themselves as questions to me: how were readers to grieve for the novel’s real victims of the Corleones who

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