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It is a godfather's view of the world. Indeed, the old don embodies Puzo's heroic ideal. "A hero," he insists, "is a guy who is very, very careful. He takes risks while he takes precautions. Like in my own family, I am very careful with my kids and my wife. My idea of a hero is a guy who never discloses any of his responsibilities or duties but glories in fulfilling them."
Puzo glories in monetary gifts to relatives, and in large trust funds for his children, Tony, 31; Dorothy, 29; Eugene, 27; Virginia, 24; and Joey, 19. The generosity amounts to workmen's compensation for years of deprivation. He is a lavish tipper and a restless traveler who spends as much as $30,000 a year on airfare. But charity begins and stays at home. "Italians never give money to charity," he says. "It is what they call 'the Red Cross syndrome.' When you appeal to Italians to give to the Red Cross, they never do because they expect to get money from the Red Cross. It is a psychological fact that Italians do not give to organized charities. They send money to their relatives."
The son of a railroad laborer, Mario was born into poverty in New York's Hell's Kitchen. He was pitching pennies at six; by adolescence he was playing poker with workingmen beneath lampposts on Tenth Avenue. Gambling became part of Mario's life; but so did reading. Puzo has described his flowering literary imagination in an essay titled Choosing a Dream: "In the summertime I was one of the great Tenth Avenue athletes, but in the wintertime I became a sissy. I read books. At a very early age I discovered libraries, the one in the Hudson Guild and the public ones. I loved reading in the Hudson Guild, where the librarian became a friend. I loved Joseph Altsheler's (I don't even have to look up his name) tales about the wars of the New York State Indian tribes, the Senecas and the Iroquois. I discovered Doc Savage and the Shadow and then the great storyteller Sabatini. Part of my character to this day is Scaramouche, I like to think. And then maybe at the age of 14 or 15 or 161 discovered Dostoyevsky. I read the books, all of them I could get. I wept for Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, I was as guilty as Raskolnikov. And when I finished The Brothers Karamazov I understood for the first time what was really happening to me and the people around me. I had always hated religion even as a child, but now I became a true believer. I believed in art. A belief that has helped me as well as any other."
Aliterary career was a long time in coming. First he tried a series of odd jobs, fought with his family ("My mother thought I was crazy to be a writer, and she may have been right") and wondered about a steady job and a steady girl. "Then I was saved," he recalls. "World War II broke out and I was delighted. I was delivered from my mother, my family, the girl I was loving passionately but did not love. I drove a Jeep, toured Europe, had love affairs, found a wife and lived the material for my first novel."