How was history white washed in Carlo's "Gaspipe"?
I tried reading that and his other book "The Butcher" and I found the writing to be terrible and I did not like how it focused way too much on law enforcement; but he did have advanced/terminal ALS at the time he wrote those books.
I found Carlo's memoir to be OK but I did not buy it as the library had a copy, and it was odd how it skipped around a lot but it was sad too.
Feel free to private message me as the thread is about the other book and not Carlo's books.
I came off sounding harsh, but I think gaspipe is fundamentally an apologist work. This might be because Carlo's family was so close to the Cassos- so while you get some interesting bits and pieces of casso's home life, you also get this overwhelming prospective that Anthony Casso was actually a good guy, a great criminal, a great boss that got put in some unfortunate positions.
There was no real analysis of the Casso's legal case/the documents/etc, no real fact checking of the Casso's very favorable portrayals of himself, lots of cliches. The reader is left to feel sorry for poor old Gaspipe.
If Casso wanted to self publish an autobiography, fine. But Carlo put his name on what was essentially the happy memories of a sociopathic killer, rat and con artist. He made no attempt to look into the self-serving excuses of man that seemed to have plenty of them for his dozens of murders. I didn't read Iceman, but the same sort of thing seemed to have played out- allowing a sociopath to lie repeatedly and misconstruct history with no fact checking.
I don't know how great of a writer he was pre-ALS, I think that is part of the reason everyone gives him a pass. very sad what happened.
