...and are not introduced at the Don's convention.

Perhaps I should have said, "Six New York families...."

The Bocchicchios do, in fact, receive about as long an "introduction" in that chapter as the Stracci, Cuneo, Barzini, and Tataglia families combined. It's just shifted by a few pages within the same chapter.

Related question: beyond the Five Families, the book says that ten other families were represented at the peace conference. "The South", Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Cleveland were represented, while Chicago was not. In the movie, Vito suggests that Kansas City was represented.

It's more an historical than a literary question, but who would likely have been the other three representatives?

A family from New Orleans (probably not included in the "South" designation - which was mostly for Florida) may have been a possibility. Since the novel states that Cuneo controlled upstate New York it may, or may not include ALL of New York State (like Buffalo, which had a real life Family). St. Louis may be just a guess as well.

Philly, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Dallas, or New Jersey.

Oh yeah... I forgot Philly... thats almost a definite.

Little Nicky wouldn't like that very much, SC.

The fifth family was the Throckmortons. They had a monopoly on polo ponies and Steuben chrystal. They controlled memberships in the elite tennis clubs and the sale of smoking jackets, cigarette holders, and leather toilet seats. They were invited to the wedding, but declined because the wooden chairs were rentals.

You're confusing the fifth NEW YORK family with the fifth NEWPORT family. The Throckmortons made the fatal error of appointing an Anglo who was not a Saxon as consigliere, and they were wiped out in the Inbred War of 1948.

The main objections to the Bocchicchios being the sixth family all seem to be subjective: they're played for comic relief, they're too small to be a powerful family, their role as peacemakers means they couldn't take part in the war. Is there anything factual (not necessarily historical facts, but just the facts of the story as set out by Puzo) in the book that is inconsistent with the Bocchocchios being the fifth of Five Families?

Thanks for clearing up my confusion. We ethnics are easily confused.

In answer to your Bocch question: Puzo never mentions the Bocch except in their capacity as unforgiving hostages.

[/quote]


In answer to your Bocch question: Puzo never mentions the Bocch except in their capacity as unforgiving hostages. [/quote]

Well, they also have the garbage hauling business. And then they're involved in the scheme to bring Michael back home. You have to wonder how the negotiator/hostage business could have been so "lucrative" when everybody was at peace for ten years.

What's unusual is that neither Stracci nor Cuneo seem to be mentioned in the book, beyond a paragraph apiece in the peace conference chapter. The Bocchicchios get probably ten times that much attention.

Puzo presents that level of detail about the Bocch because they otherwise have no explicit or assumed role in the novel. Also, it's an interesting departure from the usual and customary story about Mafia families. Stracci and Cuneo, however, fit the usual and customary mold of Mafia families, so one can make certain assumptions about their nefariou activities that realy don't require more than a paragraph or so.

In fact, Puzo goes out of his way to say that the Bocch had a streak of stupidity, their lack of adeptness at traditional Mafia endeavors, and their embrace of what is essentially a passive criminal role.

It's interesting that if Puzo had simply written: "To arrange the peace conference, the Godfather called upon the head of the Bocchicchio Family. The Bocchicchios had a territory in the Hudson Valley, and controlled the garbage hauling business there. They were traditionally called upon to act as intermediaries in time of war" then few would question that they they were the sixth family.

The full quote from Puzo is that the Bocchicchios carried a strain of stupidity, "or perhaps they were just primitive." It brings to mind the passage where the doctor sees Vito as an ill-dressed peasant, while conceding that that peasant carried a bit of folk wisdom with him.

One of the recurring themes of the book is that IQ is not everything, and can sometimes be an impediment. The Bocchicchios "are clever enough to make a good living" and that's really all the brains that they needed in their world.

Plus, it was a very interesting story. GF wasn't an elegantly written novel (to say the least), but Puzo was a wonderful storyteller in the great Italian tradition--and the Bocchicchio family and how they made their living was a great story. IMO, their story, and Neri's background and how the Corleones recruited him, are the best backstories in the novel.

Correct on all points TB. I thought the lamest part of the book was the Lucy Mancini in Vegas section. It just semed like filler.

It was filler. And as I've posted before (ad nauseum), the sole purpose seemed to be to allow Puzo to describe Lucy's operation. Evidently a woman he knew had the operation, and Puzo interested himself in it. He was unable to resist passing his knowledge along to us. I don't know what was more annoying--having to wade through all that Lucy-and-Jules crap, or knowing that the only reason they were in the novel was to serve as his vehicle for giving us a lesson in female surgery.

One of the reasons that the movie version of "The Last Don" was so much better than the novel was that the movie minimized all that Hollywood BS that Puzo put in the book. Ohh, how boring!

Puzo died just a few years ago, right? In all the time since the novel was published did anyone ever ask him why he included all that female plumbing stuff and which was the fifth family? Surely, someone did.

I'm sure the "five or six families question" must have been asked at least once. That would have been by Coppolla. The screenplay pretty decisively made the Corleones one of five and only five New York families.

It well could have been asked at some point, but the great majority of people who interviewed him would have either given the book one quick read, or else read it after seeing the movie, and so they never really considered six families.

I did hear Puzo talk about the Mafia in Sicily being a source for his stories. I've thought the Bocchicchio might have been a way for him to introduce some of that information.

New grist for old business:

The Five New York Dons enter the conference room, and Tom sees, "five stout, corpulent men."

Ten pages later, Vito rises to address the conference, "a little thin from his 'illness'".

Well, those instant transformations occur elsewhere. Guests arriving at Connie's wedding "so exclaimed at how well [Vito] looked in his tux that an inexperienced observer might easily have thought the Don himself was the lucky groom." But before the day was out, Vito was at the hospital to visit the dying Genco, and Dr. Kennedy observed "the short, heavy man in an awkwardly fitted tuxedo."

Puzo's Don from the South, Carlo Tramonti, is a pretty fair representation of Carlos Marcello (New Orleans) and Santo Trafficante (Tampa)

I think at that time there would have been more East Coast representatives invited. Perhaps someone from Philly, a separate New Jersey Family and maybe someone from Pittsburgh or Pittstown.

Just a guess...

Another one, about the first conviction of Felix Bocchicchio:

"The clan did not ask help from any of the Families or Don Corleone because Felix had refused to ask their help and had to be taught a lesson...."

Don Corleone isn't part of "the Families?"

Yeah, it's another example of why there's so much back-and-forth about how many families there were.

godfather?
I do not find these family
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