This is an astonishing first novel from an unhinged comic genius. The Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti of "Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!" are not the infamous anarchists controversially sentenced to death by the United States government for an act of terrorism they may or may not have committed, but a pair of silent film stars and slapstick comedians. At least, at the start of "Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!" they are not the infamous anarchists...The thing about "Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!" is that it defies conventional description. Part comic novel; part satire; part Pynchonesque slurring of synchronous narratives into historical allegory; and part political commentary, it is wholly brilliant, utterly bonkers and unreservedly, unabashedly one of the best debut novels written in the last 20 years. Laurel and Hardy-esque Ioons Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti rise to fame from a seedy New York vaudeville club via their famous knife-throwing gag, landing precipitately in the bigtime - movies, international tours, disastrous openings for Bob Hope - all the while indulging in a sprawling, multilayered dialogue about who, how and where they should be. One will be fat; the other skinny. One is contemplative and the other is impulsive. Both will be completely hilarious and, as their fictive selves merge with their legendary namesakes and time, history and parable collapse on their unhinged heads, the unforgettable centres of this genre-defying comic howitzer.
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From Publishers Weekly
What do comedy and anarchy have in common? That's the question behind this wildly inventive debut novel that recasts the famous anarchists as a pie-throwing slapstick duo. The reader first meets Nic Sacco ("Fatty") and Bart Vanzetti ("Skinny") as comic actors à la Laurel and Hardy in Sacco and Vanzetti Dessert the Cause, a film that mixes classic gags with a bitter rivalry. The duo barrel their way from vaudeville to film, finally striking it big with a series of "knife-grinder" comedies that are as violent as they are funny. Like a good silent comedy, the novel has its share of feints—Binelli cites fictional interviews and scholarly works about the pair's place in film history. But for all the off-kilter humor, there's an undercurrent of social consciousness that calls attention to the xenophobia of the early 20th century (one of the pair's movies is called A Couple of Wops in a Jam), condemning the role ethnic prejudice played in the actual Sacco and Vanzetti's conviction and execution. It's a hefty book, more intellectually satisfying than emotionally so, and it takes a long time for Binelli to bring together his counter-tale with its real-life antecedents. Still, this is an impressive first outing; ambitious in scope and brimming with sharp-edged black humor. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
What if Laurel and Hardy were anarchists? This novel reanimates real-life accused anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, sent to the electric chair in 1927, in the guise of an Italian-American slapstick duo whose waning fame blurs comedy and creative destruction. Ascending from vaudeville to the big screen with brilliantly subtle pie fights (Sacco and Vanzetti Dessert the Cause) and other radically physical comedy (kangaroo boxing in Sacco and Vanzetti Meet the Heavyweight Champion, Primo Carnera), the team edges their way to prominence with a series of high-concept knife-throwing pictures (Never a Dull Moment, A Couple of Cut-Ups, of course). But a USO show with Bob Hope goes awry, President McKinley gets shot, and the controlled chaos of Sacco and Vanzetti's slapstick becomes explosive enough to land the performers in jail. With his first novel, Binelli adds himself to the list of prodigious young authors working in the medium of pop culture. Although he throws around many questions about public personae, historical memory, and the anarchy of a good laugh, it's clear that Binelli's most abiding intellectual interest is about the social construction of ethnicity. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti in Mark Binelli's novel "Sacco And Vanzetti Must Die!" are not the infamous anarchists executed for treason by the United States government, but film stars and slapstick comedians who rose to fame through a seedy New York vaudeville club, then on to Hollywood films and USO tours (where they opened with disastrous results for Bob Hope). Eventually their careers decline , slapstick becomes a kind of stand-in for anarchic freedom, the two performers begin to merge with their more infamous namesakes. An alternate history of the 20th Century, "Sacco And Vanzetti Must Die! " is a work of considerable talent and originality, documenting author Mark Binelli as a writer who has mastered wit and storytelling to produce a highly recommended, minor masterpiece of literate, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and thoroughly entertaining fiction.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a triumph on a number of levels.
He started to lose me toward the end, but he deals with the subject at hand with such depth that I couldn't put it down.
What do comedy and anarchy have in common? "The ability to enter a crowded pie-shop and see nothing but possibility".
Bravo Signor Binelli!
He started to lose me toward the end, but he deals with the subject at hand with such depth that I couldn't put it down.
What do comedy and anarchy have in common? "The ability to enter a crowded pie-shop and see nothing but possibility".
Bravo Signor Binelli!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Bartolo
Format:Paperback
Two or three chapters into this novel an unaccustomed question occurred: why, exactly, had the author written it? This was a question usually put to rest, when the answer wasn't self-evident, after a few pages of a book. But in this case, I remained puzzled why Binelli had conflated anarchists and vaudevillians. Why give them movie careers? Why bother to give them so un-funny a premise as a knife-throwing act? Binelli's wit and cool precision weren't in keeping with inventions of extravagant whimsy or loopy arbitrariness; this wasn't Woody Allen. The high quality of writing kept me reading, however, and soon the raison d'etre emerged: "Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!" is a postmodern fiction-writer's equivalent of Meditations on Being Italian-American. Hence the appearance of various stereotypes (e.g. the organ grinder, the Mafiosi) and a cast that includes Primo Carnera, Benito Mussolini and Italo Balbo, and references to other Italians and Italo-Americans from Enrico Caruso to Enrico Fermi, if memory serves. (Binelli's kin were knive-sharpeners, and no doubt other elements here are autobiographical) Once my initial perplexity was resolved, I was free to concentrate on the novel--thoroughly entertaining, imaginative, provocative (as when the real historical figures Sacco and Vanzetti are presented) and quite satisfying. I look forward to Binelli's next effort--which I somehow doubt will center on his ethnicity.
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"Sacco and Vanzetti must die" only obliquely invokes the famous martyred anarchist duo. It is more concerned with the ethnic urban American experience of the first half of the 20th century. If the characters in the book hadn't been named Sacco and Vanzetti, would it have stood on its own? Yes, the book is compelling enough even if it were about an ethnic comedy team and their successes and struggles. Adding Sacco and Vanzetti to the mix adds a tragic quality to the story, a sense of lives wasted but also a mythic sense. The figures in the book are famous but their fame clearly doesn't have the staying power of the real Sacco and Vanzetti.
This goes to the question of modernism which is about breaking barriers, reaching for the new to make a deep cultural point. Here the America of the 20th century, the melting pot, the struggles of labor, the power of the establishment and ongoing struggle we all face in reaching for justice, are wrapped up with the real Sacco and Vanzetti. By turning them into comic figures, all of that mythology is turned on its head and examined anew. The book would be post-modern if these figures morphed into other comedy teams like Martin and Lewis or other duos like Huntley and Brinkley. That would be pastiche, a sending up everything and would miss out on the resonance which this book clearly has.
My only complaint is that the fictional Sacco and Vanzetti didn't come alive for me as characters. They were devices, good ones, compelling but still not connecting.
This goes to the question of modernism which is about breaking barriers, reaching for the new to make a deep cultural point. Here the America of the 20th century, the melting pot, the struggles of labor, the power of the establishment and ongoing struggle we all face in reaching for justice, are wrapped up with the real Sacco and Vanzetti. By turning them into comic figures, all of that mythology is turned on its head and examined anew. The book would be post-modern if these figures morphed into other comedy teams like Martin and Lewis or other duos like Huntley and Brinkley. That would be pastiche, a sending up everything and would miss out on the resonance which this book clearly has.
My only complaint is that the fictional Sacco and Vanzetti didn't come alive for me as characters. They were devices, good ones, compelling but still not connecting.
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