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Perhaps because success came to him in middle age, he has no romantic notions about what money can or cannot do. The long shot of literary recognition and reward has paid off, "but it can't make me 26 years old and 150 Ibs.," says the 5-ft. 6-in. author whose sumo-wrestler stomach is the major contributor to his 208 Ibs. Still, financial security has been good to his actuarial statistics. Observes Puzo, a diabetic who suffered a heart attack five years ago: "If I hadn't made a lot of money on The Godfather, I would probably be dead now, because I would have ended up working every day and living under a great deal of pressure and guilt over taking care of my family."
For the Puzos, such pressure is over. Mario and German-born Wife Erika, whom he met while serving with the Army in World War II, live with two of their five children in a white colonial tract house on Long Island. The house was a contractor's model, and the author bought it furnished in 1969. He has little concern with the obvious symbols of success. His wife made him trade in his Cadillac for a Lincoln that he does not like to drive. When he comes to Manhattan for the day, he prefers to hire a chauffeur-driven limousine.
The conspicuous possession he values is his tennis court. On its clay surface he is a better than average weekend player, unusually agile for a portly man. The interior of the Puzo home is as colorful as his fiction. Opposite a fake leopard-covered lounge chair hang two Writers Guild award plaques for Godfather I and II; the Oscars anchor a shelf. Another wall contains sliding glass cabinets holding copies of all his books with the fronts of their dust jackets facing out. Puzo is an avid and serious reader, but there is no library in sight. "I don't have much of one," he explains. "Books I don't like I throw away, or somebody comes and borrows them."
Upstairs, past a 5-ft. stuffed tiger in the hallway and through his purple-carpeted bedroom, is what Puzo calls his "peasant's study." It is a no-frills working area with an oak desk and a Naugahyde couch on which he broods and dozes. He writes in concentrated bouts; though, as he says, "my wife has never seen me work." A small table holds a worn portable Olympia. "If anything ever happened to it I would have to stop writing," he claims. Old personal objects have a talisman's significance. He is likely to wear the same light cord trousers, sports shirt and suede Bally slip-ons until his wife throws them out. He has even kept his lower-class New York accent—an obvious cover for a refined literary sensibility. Pretentiousness and a flashy style disturb him. Says Puzo about the gunning down of one of New York's flamboyant mobsters: "Whenever I see a guy with panache, I get scared. Now, Joey Gallo had panache. He wanted me to write his autobiography. I ran like a thief. I told my publisher that he would be dead in six months. And he was. I knew he would be killed because he had too much panache. More pasta and less panache is a good saying to remember."