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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A journalist's account - lengthy and accurate, March 18, 2007
If you expect a breezy page-turner about mob life you will be pleased in parts and disappointed in others. If you want a deeply investigative account of a mafia family, its history and personalities, this book is excellent. I'm not an enthusiast of the mob genre, so I came to this book with little else than what I've seen in the movies. It traces the rise and fall (or at least the beginning of the fall as it was published in 1971) of the traditional Sicilian mafia in America. Against this background are detailed and rich studies of the Bonanno family -- one of the original five New York City mob families. Nevertheless, it's not a Reader's Digest book. It is well researched and detailed, and the author makes frequent tangents. Gay Talese has formidable talents, so I did not mind any of these excesses. If you know what to expect from this book, it is very enjoyable.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dio ti binidici / the "terrifying insularity of mind", February 16, 2007
This review is from: Honor thy father
This book took a long time to finish. Actually, too long. I agree with those who found it's pace languid, and it's tone solemn. I did find it very interesting what Talese, whose work ethic and commitment to his projects is legendary, writes in the Author's Note that concludes the book, about his relationship with Bill Bonnano, and his subjects. His fondness is very apparent, as well he had incredible access to them, allowing for the intimate information he uses to tell the Bonnano story. But I feel that there is something to his relationship that prevents Honor Thy Father from being more engrossing, more urgent, more energetic. Perhaps the compromises he made to gain access proved an unobjective view. It feels that way. Because the book could have easily been 100 to 150 pages shorter. Extended paragraphs on lawyer's (verbatim) statements, over long observations about Bonnano's feelings while driving cross country, or the myriad interwoven nature of the "mafia" borne out to bewildering and at times confusing degrees. Not to spoil it, but the ending packs as solid a wallop as only a few sections throughout do. In two pages Talese conveys the bind that Bill was in and expresses what his father Joe's recognition of his son's life means to him. It pinpoints the anxiety and mystery of the whole tale. I did appreciate the juxtapositioning of Bonnano's family-wife and children-with his "family"-uncles, capos, consiglieri, etc. It proves Talese right that getting to know a mafioso such as Bonnano is both ironic and intruiging because he is a man like us all-stresses with his wife, concerned for his children, wanting to impress his father, weight fluctuations, affairs, but he also has pressures which are specific to his family's history-his sister's awareness of what their father has done to him, codes of honor and silence, absences for unknown and unexplained reasons, constant moving, security, guns, etc. I like Talese though. I am curious about his other works, and I value the style he helped pioneer. I just wish there was a less expansive scope here. It has an epic length, but it doesn't have vibrant enough sub-plots and twists. It's really about one man's difficult world.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating novelistic account of life inside the Mob, January 31, 2001
QUESTION: What motivated you to let Gay Talese have your story? Bill Bonanno: Gay Talese was a very insistent correspondent for The New York Times at the time. The New York Times, he told me, doesn't have reporters, they have correspondents. And he just didn't give up. He was very tenacious. He hounded me for about four or five months until I said OK, you can have the story, provided that we have an understanding: that you will get it a little bit at a time whenever I can. I couldn't very well tell him that at the time I was involved in a shooting war in New York. One of the stupider criticisms, amidst many legitimate ones, of George W. Bush in this 2000 Presidential campaign is that he is merely following in his Dad's footsteps; as if this was unusual? John McCain went to the Naval Academy--his father and grandfather were admirals. Steve Forbes runs Forbes magazine--here's a shocker for you, he wasn't the founder. Al Gore was nicknamed Prince Albert because he was so patently aping his old man's career. (Bradley is the exception here, thanks to the freak gift of athletic ability). And, your intrepid correspondent, the fifth of six consecutive Orrin Judds, attended the alma mater of three of the four, went to law school like the third and, barring a strict prohibition from my wife, would even now be attending seminary like the first and fourth. This is what men do, we follow in our fathers footsteps. In Honor Thy Father, Gay Talese offers a fascinating real-life account of what happens when the family business turns out to be the Mafia. Talese was still a beat writer for the New York Times in 1965 when he was sent to the federal courthouse in Manhattan to cover the arrest of Bill Bonanno, an intelligent, affable young mobster who had been wanted for questioning in the disappearance of his father, mob boss Joseph Bonanno. Talese, himself of Italian descent, had long wondered what life was like for real mafiosi. He approached Bill Bonanno, who was his own age and was college educated (though he never finished) and asked him if he would sit down for a series of interviews which would lead to a book on growing up the son of a Don. Over the next five years, while Bonanno dealt with the disappearance and reappearance of his father, fought his way through a mob war (the Banana War) and ended up going to prison for credit card fraud, Talese gained unprecedented access to Bonanno and family and friends. The result is this fascinating novelistic account of life inside the Mob, with a particular focus on how this bright, articulate, modern man was drawn into his father's brutal and backwards business. It all makes for riveting reading. GRADE: A
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