By Joe Flaherty
The New York Times
January 23, 1972

It’s a fact, sophistication aside, that the publishing industry is as trendy as the garment industry. And its real motive is the same—to sell. We have witnessed the Kennedy Season, the Black Season (basic or otherwise), the Revolutionary Season (boutique or plain pipe‐rack bomber), the Feminist Season and the Mafia Season (Italian knit).

The Mafia Season, as best this reader can recall, was launched by that Jenny Lind of the mob, Joe Valachi, presented in Peter Maas’s book, The Valachi Papers. But the book that really started things rolling was Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, the huge best seller about “men of respect,” which was written respectfully with technicolor cameras in mind. It was an entertaining novel until it bogged down in Sicily, where the author insisted on evoking the scent of lemon trees. But nasal esthetics aside, it was harmless and amusing.

Gay Talese’s current best seller, Honor Thy Father, is another matter. Harmless it is not. Talese set out to study the rise and fall of the Mafia family of Joe Bonnano, particularly the fortunes of Joe’s son and second‐incomlnand, Salvatore “Bill” Bonnano. Why did Talese undertake such an enterprise? “This book is a study of the rise and fall of the Bonnano organization, a personal history of ethnic progression and of dying tradition.” That is a line that would move a lady like Margaret Mead to clear her throat.

It a good thing to be suspicious of books that belabor an author’s legwork or the tons of tape he has gathered in his pursuit of “truth.”

In an Esquire interview Talese explained that he wanted to study a family, a dynasty, as he had for his book on The New York Times, The Kingdom and the Power. One is tempted to ask, if he was taking the familial view why not the Ronzonis or the DiMaggios (there the distaff side would have been more interesting)? The simple truth is the Bonnanos got the contract (a sweetheart) because the mob is “in.”

The reader is set up by reference to the author’s “six years of research.” It a good thing to be suspicious of books that belabor an author’s legwork or the tons of tape he has gathered in his pursuit of “truth.” One longs for the day when a publisher will state on a dust jacket that “Mr. Gilhooley has written this book between his frequent trips to literary saloons.”

But these complaints are small potatoes (forgive my Irish heritage) compared to the dangerous point of view put forth in the book—the villains are anti‐establishment Robin Hoods, while their victims are something to be ignored. This, of course, is not new in journalism‐asfiction. For instance, in the course of reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, one began to suspect the author thought the Clutter family got what deserved for being so middle class, compared to the sensitive little darlings who murdered them.

Talese, working the novelistic hype (he seems to live inside Bill Bonnano’s head, creating a Jiminy Cricket style) offers us much the same point of view:

“When he went to ROTC camp, and later into military service with the Army Reserves, he was trained in the technique of legal killing. He learned how to use bayonet, how to fire an M‐1 rifle, how to adjust the range finder of a cannon in Patton tank. He memorized the United States military code, which in principle was not dissimilar from the Mafia’s, emphasizing honor, obedience and silence captured. And if he had gone into combat and had killed several North Koreans or Chinese Communists he might have become a hero. But if he killed one of his father’s enemies in a Mafia war, where buried in the issues was the same mixture of greed and self‐righteousness found in all the wars of great nations, he could be charged with murder.”

Talese also wonders why The New York Times should devote so much space to Mafia killings when they are peanuts compared to the bloodbath going on in Vietnam. The war, it seems, excuses any individual conduct, from one‐on‐one murder to exposing yourself in a playground. It’s ironic that Talese falls into the Administration trap of low body counts to prove a situation is acceptable. (I’ve always thought a moral view of human behavior taught responsibility for individual acts, regardless of the collective acts of leaders and governments.)

What made a journalist of Talese’s rank write such an unfortunate book is beyond me.

And what about “the study” of the Bonnano organization? Where is it, pray tell? We learn the Bonnanos were “into gambling in Queens,” the illegality of which Talese tells us is hypocritical since everyone likes to gamble anyway. Loansharking, we learn, is a humane, allpurpose banking for deadbeats who cannot get a loan elsewhere. All the killing reported in the book takes place between warring Mafia factions. The reportage on dope traffic is as light as mousse. The citizen—victim is invisible or explained away as a greedy hypocrite.

Where are the ruined innocent families? The polluted labor unions? The intimidated shopkeepers? The bodies maimed or destroyed? The businesses taken over by coercion? Nowhere in this monument to investigative reporting, because this is the stuff in which only “tabloid” hacks are interested, not the author.

How did the organization work, how much money did they collect, who were their clients and victims? Further pedestrian “tabloid” interests, one presumes.

Instead, we get the humane side of the Mafia: Family dinner conversations worthy of As the World Turns, family crises right out of Father Knows Best—Bill can’t pay his milk bill (sob), he has to return two electric guitars he got for his children because he can’t pay for them (shades of the day the Nixon family decided they couldn’t afford the pony). One begins to envision the screen epic, starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt.

What made a journalist of Talese’s rank write such an unfortunate book is beyond me. He confesses he became good friend of Bill Bonnano (gone are the innocent days when writers used to sport boxers). Or perhaps it was Talese’s Italian heritage? Sad that such a journalist should be taken, far sadder that all the critics didn’t see through it.

[Photo Credit: Art Shay c/o The Art Institute of Chicago]

Honor Thy Father Knows Best