Volume 32, Number 2 · February 14, 1985
Robin Hoodo
By E.J. Hobsbawm
The Sicilian
by Mario Puzo
Linden Press/Simon and Schuster, 410 pp., $17.95
With the publication of Mario Puzo's The Godfather in 1969, the long-lasting passion of the American public for the Mafia finally came out of the closet. In practice it had long been an accepted but minor part of American city life and business about which nobody got very excited, but in theory it represented organized crime, sin, and the man-eating shark, and therefore had to be publicly execrated. J. Edgar Hoover, with his habitual nose for the real sentiments of middle America, carefully avoided choosing it as a target, and indeed refused to admit its existence until its involvement in the heroin traffic made it, at least for a time, genuinely unpopular. Hoover's 'public enemies' usually challenged the values of business society, at least symbolically. The Mafia, so far from challenging the values of 'Americanism,' embodied them.
Review, 3666 words
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