Mario Puzo Biography and List of Works

"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns."

American novelist, best known for his Godfather saga. The novel stayed on The New York Times' best-seller list for sixty-seven weeks. Puzo's book had a deep impact on American society through its film adaptation, and the saying "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse" has become a cliché.

Mario Puzo was born into an immigrant family in New York Cities infamous 'Hell's Kitchen'. His father was a railway trackman. Puzo lived with his six brothers and sisters above the railway yards. During World War II Puzo served in the US Air Force stationed in East Asia and Germany. He studied at the New School for Social Research, New York and at Columbia University. Puzo then worked for 20 years as an administrative assistant in government offices in New York and overseas. In 1946 he married Erika Lina Broske; they had three sons and two daughters. Puzo's first book, Dark arena, appeared in 1955, when he was 35. The novel explored the relationship between Mosca, a soldier, and Hella, a German native, and the problems created by the characters' different backgrounds.

From 1963 Puzo worked as a freelance journalist and writer. Fortunate Pilgrim was published in 1965 and followed a family of Italian immigrants from the late 1920s until the end of World War II. The plot centres on an Italian peasant woman's perception of the 'American dream', and juxtaposed her honest and determined progress with that of a corrupt social climber. Neither of Puzo's first two novels was a financial success, though both received good reviews.

The themes of love, crime, family bondage, and Old World values were further developed in Puzo's third novel The Godfather (1969). The central character, Don Corleone, is the boss of an influential crime syndicate. His values are both 'domestic' and anti-social. Puzo describes Don Corleone's struggle for power among the underworld bosses, and how family values are transferred from one generation to the next and how they change under social pressure. With the book Puzo at last achieved his financial goals, but he also confessed that he wrote below his true talent.

Puzo's international bestseller was also adapted into the screen. Director Francis Ford Coppola did not like the book at first, but his films, Godfather and Godfather Part II, received several Oscars, including best picture and best script (written by Puzo and Coppola). The production was beset with difficulties. Before shooting began, the Italian-American Civil Rights League held a rally in Madison Square Garden and raised $600 000 towards attempts to stop the film. Finally Copplola agreed to eliminate the words 'Mafia' and 'Cosa Nostra' from the screenplay. The third part (1990), which was not based on the original book, was written by the director Coppola and Puzo.

Compared to the films, Puzo's book is less romantisized and it has more graphic sex and violence. Paso believes corruption can benefit society, Coppola's attitude toward the corruption is more cutting and angrily draws parallels to contemporary politics: the Watergate scandal was simultaneously revealing the reach of criminality into the highest levels of government.

Fools Die (1978), was set in Las Vegas, Hollywood, Tokyo, and New York during the 1950s and 1960s. The protagonist in the story was a dishonest fiction writer who considers himself a modern-day magician.

Puzo's later works from the 1990s include The Fourth K (1991), a global political thriller in the spirit of Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follet. In The Last Don (1996) Puzo returned to the world of Godfathers. The head of the most powerful Mafia family in the country, Don Clericuzio, decides to make his criminal enterprises legal. The story follows the don's plans for his families' future success. Puzo died from heart failure on July 1999 at his home in Long Island, after completing his latest organized crime book, OMERTA.

"Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, now matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man's troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution of that man's woe. His reward? Friendship, the respectful title of "Don," and sometimes the more affectionate salution of "Godfather."

For further reading: The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (1972); The Italian-American Novel by Rose B. Green (1974); Contemporary Popular Writers, ed. by David Mote (1997)

Dark Arena, (1955)