The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [125]
“The conflicts of new and old, poverty and riches, crime and punishment make for a rich work of fiction.”
—The Denver Post
“Call it The Godmother. Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo is easily the equal of Don Corleone, a calculating, tough peasant woman who came to the New World to marry a man she scarcely remembered. . . . The author lovingly but starkly evokes the street life of New York’s Lower West Side. . . . If you are not already a Puzo fan, this gorgeously written and deeply moving book will make you one.”
—American Way
“Among Puzo’s books, The Fortunate Pilgrim comes closest to the texture of the everyday life of Italian-American immigrants. Yes, it has some sex and crime, but it is quieter in tone, less macho, more real, than The Godfather.”
—Lexington Herald-Leader
“There is no doubt that in both form and content, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Puzo’s greatest contribution to American literature. . . . The best of The Godfather comes out of this novel. . . . The saga of the Angeluzzi-Corbo family brings out the best and the worst of Italian ghetto life, which Puzo dramatizes through an urban realism that can match the best writers of this genre. . . . Puzo should have become famous for this novel. . . . We should buy this book because it will give us a greater understanding of who we are by showing us where we came from.”
—Italian America
Thirty-five years ago
The Godfather arrived.
In 2004, The Godfather Returns.
A new novel based on the characters created
by Mario Puzo
On sale November 16, 2004
1-4000-6101-6 $26.95 / $37.95 in Canada
Available wherever books are sold
READERS GROUP GUIDE
Mario Puzo on The Godfather
I was ready to forget novels except maybe as a puttering hobby for my old age. But one day a writer friend dropped into my magazine office. As a natural courtesy, I gave him a copy of The Fortunate Pilgrim. A week later he came back. He thought I was a great writer. I bought him a magnificent lunch. During lunch, I told him some funny Mafia stories and my ten-page outline. He was enthusiastic. He arranged a meeting for me with the editor of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. The editors just sat around for an hour listening to my Mafia tales and said go ahead. They also gave me a $5,000 advance and I was on my way, just like that. Almost—almost, I believed that publishers were human.
It took me three years to finish. . . . And it was mostly all fun. I remember it as the happiest time of my life. (Family and friends disagree.) I’m ashamed to admit I wrote The Godfather entirely from research. I never met a real honest-to-God gangster. I knew the gambling world pretty good, but that’s all. After the book became “famous,” I was introduced to a few gentlemen related to the material. They were flattering. They refused to believe that I had never been in the rackets. They refused to believe that I had never had the confidence of a Don. But all of them loved the book.
In different parts of the country I heard a nice story: that the Mafia had paid me a million dollars to write The Godfather as a public relations con. I’m not in the literary world much, but I hear some writers claim I must have been a Mafia man, that the book could not have been written purely out of research. I treasure the compliment.
—Mario Puzo, The Godfather Papers, 1972
The Story Behind the Sequel
By Jonathan Karp
Throughout the decade I was Mario Puzo’s editor, I would periodically beg him to write a sequel to The Godfather. ”Bring back the Corleones!” I would plead. “Whatever happened to Johnny Fontane? Can’t you do something with Tom Hagen? Don’t you think Michael has some unfinished business?”
Mario was always polite in the face of my wheedling and his response was always the same: No.
I understood why Mario never wanted to continue the story. He was a gambler at heart, and resurrecting The Godfather would have been a bad percentage move for him. It was bound to pale in comparison to the original. How do you improve on a legend?
But one day on the phone, Mario did give me his blessing