Originally posted by plawrence:
Even if you guys are right - and you may very well be - it's still an example of sloppy writing by Puzo.
He's leaving the reader confused as to whether or not Vito really did look good in his tuxedo, or if people were simply saying he looked good out of respect for him.
Maybe it's not necessarily sloppy writing. Maybe Puzo wrote this way to make it an open ended possibility. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Don Corleone probably looked like God himself to people like Bonasera or Enzo who desperately needed him for a service. To others, such as Don Barzini, he was merely an enemy, and Barzini probably saw him that way.
Who knows, it may be sloppy writing, but I'd like to pretend that there's more to it than just that.
