Read Recently: “Honor Thy Father” by Gay Talese:
Title: “Honor Thy Father”
Author: Gay Talese.
Synopsis: Talese spent several years in the late 1960s with Bill Bonanno, heir to New York’s Bonanno crime family. Staggering level of observational detail ensues.
Backstory: Picked up at the San Francisco Library Book Sale after my friend Rodes mentioned I should look into Talese.
Notes: Talese is the only author in this book that straddles generations of New Journalism. I’ve been trying to bone up on my new journalists because I’d like to be one someday.
Verdict: This book leaves nothing out. It’d give you Bonanno’s blood type if you asked. Talese’s reporting is beyond thorough which is great if the mafia if your kind of subject and a little tiresome if it’s not. He doesn’t waste time with a lot of analysis or pondering of the social siginificance of it all. Instead he captures a historical moment, a moment where the old familial structure of the mafia was giving way modern corporatism and the sons of family chieftains wished to be college graduates instead of following in their father’s footsteps.
Talese paints Bill Bonanno as a tragic figure, a man with more than enough natural gifts to be succesful, comfortable and happy, if he were only born into a different family. And if that sounds like The Godfather, think again. Mafia life seems largely made up of endless cycles of fear, hiding, bad food, and unending bordemn, signifying nothing.
Talese is from the old school. He sees his job as a journalist to report, not philosophize nor stand in his own way. That can read a little dry, even when you admire his depth.