SOURCE: "Pasta with Gusto," in The New York Times Book Review, January 31, 1965, pp. 36-7.

In the following review, Boroff offers a favorable assessment of The Fortunate Pilgrim.

One of the mysteries of literary life in America is why Italian-Americans have contributed so little to it. A people of enormous vitality, Italians in this country have prospered, moved into the middle class, but have produced relatively few novelists, especially vis à vis the Jews and the Irish. This can be explained in part by the fact that Italian immigrants, largely from the impoverished South, were cut off from their own cultural traditions. It may well be, too, that the very cohesiveness of Italian-American life has militated against creativity. Yet with the erosion of the tight, tumultuous Italian family, the Italian-American novel may at last come into its own.

Certainly, Mario Puzo's The Fortunate Pilgrim augurs well for that possibility. The...