It had been due. A long time. The Godfather needed to be reviewed and I picked up the book a second time just for the cause. Although I remembered all about the Don and Michael and Luca and Carlo and Kay, a second glance to the book was absolutely necessary. I read through most of the books, remember The Godfather is in books and not parts, but towards the end I felt I need to stop. I already knew the events that were to follow, but so real was the description that I felt a chill, on my second read, that those event had caused in me after I had read the book for the first time.
My best ideas of World War II came from movies like Guns of Navarone and its contemporaries, and some through the more recent Valkyrie. I am more than 40 years younger to the end of the war, and while reading Godfather I felt I was there. I could picture the mall housing that the Don and his family lived in. I could see the not so high rising New York and the less populated streets and beaches of Long Island. I felt like the younger brother to Michael, like the fourth son to Don Vito Corleone, always present there and witnessing and learning the trade under the guidance of the best.
Mario Puzo recreated a world for me which I could never witness. Every line was a frame in itself and I could picture myself standing in a corner, learning the ways of the Don. I was there in New York for Connie's wedding, I was there when Don was shot and I was there in the passenger seat when Sonny was murdered. I was the best man to Michael when he married Apollonia in Sicily.
I knew the time had come when Carlo Rizzi would be strangled, and when Emilio Barzini and Philip Tattaglia would be shot, but I didn't want to read through, not because Mario had written something extraordinary, but because he had written something so extraordinary that I didn't want to be a witness to the time when the Innocent Michael became Don. I didn't want to be a witnes again to his brutality and to his cunning. I probably didn't want to learn from this Michael because if I continued reading I surely would. Probably, somewhere I wanted Tom to be the Judas who betrays the family so much. But the events did not change. They happened in the same order once again, they had to, and in the end, I did read, because Mario compelled me to.
Forgive me Mario Puzo for addressing you as Mario, I commit the folly with utmost respect for you.
