Godfather redux
The Last Don, Mario Puzo, Ballentine, 1996.
Remember The Godfather? Picture the same book written by the same author who just needed the money. This book has all of the substance, and none of the style, of Godfather. Which is about as damning a statement as I can make about a work of fiction. Look, life is about the triumph of substance over style, and fiction is the reverse. Which is why a particularly good piece of prose usually makes you feel vaguely dirty after you've written it. How does this apply? Well, the book reads like Godfather, but everything feels rushed and hurried, as if the book had been re-written too many times. Don does have that wonderful Italian-American ruthless machismo going for it, and the story is structured quite involvingly. There would be nothing wrong with this book if a previously-unpublished idiot (like me) had written it. However, what we expect from Puzo is much better, and the consistent tell-don't-show nature of the book grates on you by the end.
The plot is perhaps more clever than Godfather. Loose ends aren't completely gathered until the end of the book. Poetic justice prevails. Characters work too - they're all complex and separable from eachother, and all of the principle characters embark on a spiritual journey. The stereotype of the ultra-wiley Mafia don is preserved. Background and scenery is skimpy as you would expect out of a popular action-thriller type book.
So, from a well-crafted plot and characters, with physical imagery no worse than others in its genre, you would expect this book to be a better-than-average read. After all, the substance is there. But what's missing is the style. Godfather was like Don Corleone's brooding contemplation of a life filled with joy, anger, and sin. The style is very dark and probing, without being too invasive in the characters' minds; the reader finds out what characters are thinking by what they do and say, not through the simple, boring, TV-like expedient of having the author lay it out for them. Don, unfortunately, is nothing like this. The reader inhabits the mind of the characters almost exclusively through the novel, making the book the literary equivalent of Letterman.
As pure unsophisticated escape, this book is just fine. But if you're the sort of person who prefers books over television because they allow you to exercise your imagination to some degree, this isn't for you.
Thomas K. Burkholder, November 25, 1998.