Word: puzo
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...backdrop of The Last Don may be operatic ("God's world was a prison in which man had to earn his daily bread, and his fellow man was a fellow beast, carnivorous and without mercy"), but the setting and characters are commedia dell'arte. Puzo playfully admires the aging Don Dom. "Early on," he writes, "he had been told the famous maxim of American justice, that it was better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent man be punished. Struck almost dumb by the beauty of the concept, he became an ardent patriot...
...novel's unwritten law is that time eventually earns a dispensation for past sins. Tough old pros like Alfred Gronevelt, official owner of the Clericuzio-controlled Xanadu Hotel in Las Vegas, and ruthless Eli Marrion, geriatric head of LoddStone Studios, are, like the Don, the novel's honored guests. Puzo's younger heroes are fewer but conspicuous: the Don's Adonis-like grandnephew Croccifixio ("Cross") De Lena and his film-goddess girlfriend, Athena Aquitane. The book's fools and villains are ruled by passions, impulses and grotesque egos. A degenerate gambler and loudmouthed deadbeat lurches obnoxiously toward his inevitable fate...
...marriage of the Mafia and movies provides Puzo with his longest-running gag. In scene after scene the gentlemen from New York and Las Vegas have more ethics and common courtesy than most Hollywood bosses. Puzo, of course, has a few scores to settle. In 1974 he went to the mattresses with Universal Studios over his share of profits for writing Earthquake. The experience probably explains why Bobby Bantz, LoddStone's second in command, is a fulsome repository of foul behavior and slippery business practices. Among them is the willfully complicated gross-and-net game that fattens those...
Three Cheers for Hypocrisy would make a suitable subtitle for The Last Don. "Mario writes about the hearts of thieves and thievery in our hearts. He is fascinated by the moral ironies in life," says Random House editor Karp. Puzo's own are no exception. Before he wrote The Godfather, Puzo spent years vainly trying to gamble his way out of debt. Eventually crime paid, but not in the way he thought it would...
...Puzo now keeps his wagering within the family. "He acts as bookie for his children, who will gamble on sports events, and he will take whatever side they don't want," says friend Speed Vogel, a retired businessman and co-author of Joseph Heller's memoir, No Laughing Matter...