Interesting to hear Erik's side of things. He does raise some interesting points. But I still don't agree with much of anything he said.
I don't fault Winegardner for creating new characters. It's just that he abandoned the original characters too much in order to follow these new characters around. And the new characters he did create weren't that interesting. Geraci and his father had a good rapport and were memorable, but everyone else blended together on the page. I couldn't tell them apart.
...... we just didn't believe Mike or Kay would use a line like that. We didn't like what MW did with Fredo because it cheapened Fredo's fragility. And if I were gay I would take offense to it. Fredo couldn't just be weak because the only trait he got from Vito was his sensitivity... No, Fredo had to be weak because he was gay or bi-sexual. Or whatever. All it ended up as was a cheap ploy to bring homosexuality to the GF world.
Well said. My thoughts exactly.
My biggest problem, however, was MW taking it upon himself to change Kay's abortion to a miscarriage. Kay's admittance that she had Mike's second son aborted was a cornerstone in their relationship. It was Kay breaking free of Mike's clutches. But MW had to cheapen it. And for what? What did it bring to the story? Nadda!
Well in fairness to Winegardner, Erik does make a pretty valid point in that the Returns and Revenge are based off of The GF Novel. And I have no problem with that. But Erik, if that is the arguement that one is going to use in a debate of this nature, than I would have to counter by saying if that is the case, then Winegardner should have remained consistent. If he decided to pick and choose what he wanted to base on the novel and what he wanted to pick from the GFII movie, than he, nor anyone else, cannot use the "its based on the novel" argument.
Then, MW fails to water the seeds that were planted for him to grow. Chief among them is Clemenza's death. We're told "that wasn't no heart attack" but MW gives him a heart attack. Very interesting.
Then, when we're told that Tom died of a heart attack in Part III... and we're given no reason to think it was anything other than a heart attack, MW has Hagen killed by Geraci in a lame fashion.
Again, this is my pet peeve with Winegardner's writing of the books. I totally understand that he needed to create new characters and needed to introduce them in the mix of the old ones. BUT, instead of wasting 3 chapters on Johnny Fontaine and Francesca's relationship, he could have given us one chapter on that and then used another or two on a character that he plucked from the GFII movie and not the novel, a character like Pentangeli, and given us a little more insight into that character. Insight that we weren't given in the movie.
And by the way, concerning what Don Cardi had to say: "The guy had a license to use these characters, and in having that privilege he could have written some great stories using some very interesting GF characters. Characters like Pentageli, Clemenza, etc. Instead he blew it big time." What? Did we read the same book? Clemenza was in a huge chunk of Returns. In fact, every major character - and several minor ones - from Puzo's book who was alive was included in this story,
Did we read the same book?
Yes it's true that Winegardner did include many major characters, many minor characters, and even a good amount of Clemenza. But my beef is in the way that he used those characters. It was almost as if he dangled them in front of our faces to keep us interested in the book, never really getting deeper into those characters and never giving the insight that may have answered some of the questions that we may have had about them from seeing them in the movies.
Don't you agree that a background story of a Frank Pentangelli, or a WIllie Cicci would have been pretty interesting?
I've said in many of my other posts that I actually liked the Nick Geraci character that Winegardner created. Thought that he was a pretty interesting character. His creation of characters is not my beef. Every good author should inject some of his own creations even when basing his writing on another authors book. My beef is the way that, in some cases, he prtrayed the characters that Puzo created, and then in other cases the way that he did not portray the characters that FFC created, but yet chose to insert here and there in his books.
In Revenge, one of my favorite parts ( yeah, I actually had a favorite part or two
) is when Winegardner is trying to portray the big sitdown in South Brooklyn. He had some really great newly created characters intertwined with some of the original characters. And he did a really excellent job of creating a picture in the readers mind of what that area of Brooklyn looked like and how the sitdown appeared. It was a point in the book where I began to really get pulled in (see my back and forth chapter by chapter posts that i made while reading the book) and then BAM! Dead end. Boring next story.
Perhaps many, including myself were a bit too harsh on Mr. Winegardner. Lord knows that it took some courage to write a book based on both a novel and a trilogy that are held in such high regard. But by doing so he also took on the risk of critisizm, and should take it for what it's worth.
As I said there were some spots in both books where Winegardner showed that he is a pretty good writer, and that is why I think that he could have done much much better with his storylines and with some of the characters that we were familiar with.
