Friday Reads: The Godfather

We'll be doing Friday Reads periodically throughout the summer. On this last Friday of the Spring 2022 semester, Adam has selected a nice, feel-good novel to kick off beach-read season -- The Godfather by Mario Puzo. 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie The Godfather, a hugely popular and influential film that is also arguably the best American film ever made. Given the film's vaunted place in our cultural imagination, it's easy to forget what a cultural phenomenon the source novel by Mario Puzo was after its publication in 1969. The novel sold millions of copies, and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for well over a year. Reading the novel now, decades after its original publication, it's easy to see why it was so popular. Puzo's novel is a salacious, violent story, and a peek behind the curtain of the Mafia, a subject that has long fascinated Americans.

The novel tells the story of the Corleones, a Mafia family in New York, in the decade after the end of World War II. Patriarch Vito Corleone is feared and respected by many, but after a botched assassination attempt leaves him hospitalized, his sons Sonny and Michael, with the help of consigliere Tom Hagen, must try and keep the family in power amid a mob war. It's a story about the corrupting influence of power, and like many classic works of twentieth century American fiction, the American Dream looms large in the background.

It's a book I've been meaning to read for years and years, but I kept putting it off. I guess the opportunity to read it now, during the movie's 50th anniversary, was an offer I just couldn't refuse.