SOURCE: "Mario Puzo," in The Italian-American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974, pp. 336-68.

In the following excerpt, Green examines the major themes of The Godfather and discusses Puzo's contribution to Italian-American literature.

For the average reader, the Italian-American novel has arrived with Mario Puzo. His books definitely and dramatically document the thesis that the Italian-American novelist has identified himself with what has been professionally and socially inimical to him, the national American culture. Meanwhile, the erstwhile hostile environment has finally accepted and absorbed him. Puzo demonstrates some violent dynamics of this contemporary Italian-Americanism in three books: The Dark Arena (1953); The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964); and The Godfather (1969).

Despite, or perhaps because of, contemporary America's psychic obsessions, Puzo's novels have achieved recognition, since he deals aggressively with areas of Italian-American experience to which the mass media have given national notoriety. Although racism has...