I haven’t read the book since the 1970s, but mainly what I remember about Mario Puzo’s The Godfather was how badly written it was…I guess I happily forgot the details. But now Mallory Ortberg has to go and remind me.
Really, the movie might be a classic, but man, the book was terrible.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so torn between laughing and weeping before.
Heh. Ever read “The Graduate”? Um, the movie’s better….
Someone in the comments rightfully turned attention to the The Fistula Foundation, treating a medical condition that is far more serious and far more painful than simply lacking the approval of a bunch of fictional men.
It’s a good cause.
The Godfather was one of those rare books I gave up on. Could not slog my way through. Never saw the movies, either.
Yeah…I don’t think I missed much.
Did the publisher not have an editor for this? Not just to say “hey Mario, about this whole giant hoo-ha thing?”, but also to deal with lines like this:
That reads more like part of a Grandpa Simpson anecdote than the source material for one of the greatest movies of all time.
Moggie
Jules was wearing an onion on his belt, which was the style at the time…
That is…REALLY bad. Wow.
I had blotted that particular subplot from my mind. Not so the one about Michael’s adventure hiding out in Sicily. He falls in lust with a teenager and marries her (while already married in the US, and with the full approval of the girl’s family). Then she conveniently gets killed by a car bomb set by rivals of the Corleone family, giving him an incentive to go home and clean house. Even as a teenager I thought that was pretty skeevy.
I remember reading the Godfather when it came out. I was surprised at the cartoon-like nature of a lot of it — Santino’s enormous penis being the prime example. But then, (and this was the ’70’s), I found a quote from Puzo in some writer’s magazine; I paraphrase slightly here, but the meaning is clear.
And just to put it in context, Mario had previously been talking about his nearly twenty years trying to write the Great American Novel, getting published with trash in men’s magazines, and serious literary stuff in small journals. Never enough to really make a living. Then came this:
“I looked in the mirror and said to myself: ‘You’re in your mid-forties, you’ve got four kids, and a pile of debt — it’s time to grow up and sell out.'”
And then he wrote The Godfather, specifically to be a trashy, lowest-common-denominator best seller.
And it worked!
I went to work to find the quote I referenced above, and found this:
“In the foreword of his 1972 autobiography, “The Godfather Papers & Other Confessions”, he explains that “The Godfather”, though a best seller, was his least favorite book . . .”
Heh. Ever read “The Graduate”? Um, the movie’s better….
Actually, I was surprised at how many of the funny lines I’d assumed were Buck Henry’s were in the book already.
Benighted ignorami.
It’s a metaphor.
I used to assume the book was *always* better than the movie. Then I realized that was just because I don’t read many terrible books.
ChasCPeterson #13
Good gods.
For what?
I loved the film “Witches of Eastwick”, but I threw the book in the trash after reading it.
Forget the book, I’ve always though the movie was way overrated. Great acting sure, and technically it was good, but the story was…not much of one. Get angry, kill all your enemies. Deep man.
What is a metaphor?
I remember I enjoyed the organized crime drama part of the book a lot more than how it was depicted in the movie, but even at the time I thought the book in general was chauvinist as fuck.
My only reading of “that book” was being told by another of the Scouts (BSA) that one should read pages xx-yy for a “good time” {wink, wink, nudge, nudge}. So I found the book, on sale at a neighborhood department store, and opened the book to those pages. Read them while standing there, It was the sex scene, of course, and, inevitably, one of the shopkeeps sees me and whispers, “this is a _store_, not a library.” So I quickly put the book back on the display rack and quickly leave, totally embarrassed.
From what I’ve heard about the movie, is that it is one of those where the sequel is better than the first; ie Godfather II vs The Godfather. But IDK, never saw either of them.
Two out of three of my bar-trivia group have read “The Godfather”, and the vagina subplot is pretty much the only thing either of us remembers about the book. “The Godfather”, movie or book, comes up a lot at bar trivia, and one or the other of us brings this subplot up every time.
His enormous penis. It’s actually an enormous… metaphor.
Mellow Monkey,
You have no idea what a Simpsons reference does for my estimation of you. And I liked you already.
All it needed was for his wife’s body to get stuffed in the fridge by an assassin for Michael to find later.
Which, to be fair, is to the best of my knowledge an extremely accurate depiction of how organized crime families were/are in real life, too. Not that it excuses it, but it wasn’t fabricated just for the book.
In my opinion the best example of terrible novel becomes great movie is Gone With the Wind. The novel is badly written, turgid crap and just to top off the literary horror that it is it is also racist. The movie is however a wonderful movie. How they transmuted pig shit into gold is a miracle.
I read the book two years ago, and the big vagina parts legitimately take up 10-20% of the book. It has absolutely nothing to do with the main story arc, and is terrible. The book also kind of endorses eugenics. All around, very bad.
“Jaws” is similar, not so much in the writing but in the use of a subplot (diver’s affair with sheriff’s wife) that Spielberg wisely cut from the movie, which is a classic.
The book/movie store where I worked this summer had a theme weekend celebrating the intesection of those two. TV and movie based on books, and vice versa. I wore a homemade T-shirt boldly labeled “the movie was better”, and covered with pictures of examples. As I recall, I had The Godfather, Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park, Big Fish, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, and Fight Club.
More like how Saving Ryan’s Privates ends, yukkity yuk.
Same ol’ Chas.
Yeah, it’s generally agreed by film historians that Coppola elevated pulp trash to art. It helped in that Paramount pursued him to direct the film; The Godfather was not his project. And he agreed to do it only if they let him do his own passion project, The Conversation, right after. So because he had no deep undying love for the book, Coppola felt free to approach the film in his own way, and ignore what wasn’t good about it.
Can’t believe I’m the first one to link to Storm Large’s “Eight Miles Wide”! (Warning: Hilarious and very sticky ear-worm.)
“My vagina is 8 miles wide
Absolutely everyone can come inside
If you’re ever frightened just run and hide
My vagina is 8 miles wide”
http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858824494/
FYI, I (a) read The Godfather 53,000 times in middle school, (b) passed it around among all the other giggly middle schoolers, with the dirty and violent passages dog-eared (I actually used it with a student who had trouble reading and who I was supposed to be helping — it sure did get him interested in reading!), and (c) thought for years afterwards that Ginormous Vagina-itis was actually a real thing, and was terrified that I would have it.
(BTW, you HAVE to read the comments on this one. One of them made me laugh so hard, I literally fell over in my seat on the train.
Crap. Wrong link. Meant to link to the YouTube video.
i remember making the ghastly mistake of reading “trainspotting.” that may have been the first time it really crystallized for me that bad bad books sometimes are made into movies.
i never read “godfather,” but i am reminded that film and books are different media, and our expectations of each should be different.
So, I just watched the “8 miles wide” video, in Greta’s #33
I insist.
Everyone watch it.
I INSIST!!!
The ironic part is that the opinions of women in the book are routinely dismissed by guys who try their best to keep the pretense of a wholesome Italian household while murdering their own relatives on the side.
Well, great. I know what I’m going to be singing all night long.
::hums::
Greta, thanks for that video.
Glad to now know, “8 Miles Wide”, should make for an interesting bed time song tomorrow night, I was loving it, but closing with Pixies Vigantic riff pushed it over the edge.
As a kids, we’d often get Italian movies and TV series in the Eastern Bloc, and I was really, really into those dealing with the mafia, so as soon as I managed to get my hands on the book, I read it. I was extremely underwhelmed but because everyone was going on and ON about how great the movies are (and in my experience to date, books were always better, even when the movies were great), I decided it was the translator’s fault. Evidently it wasn’t. Good to know.
(For the record, I finally watched the first 2 movies relatively recently, and felt utterly cheated by my own brain because I didn’t like them either. I love Goodfellas though.)