"I used to do a book bonus on the weekends, which was at least 60 pages. I never could write in the office, I had to work at home. When I was working on The Godfather, I was doing three stories a month, I was writing book reviews for The New York Times, Book World, Time magazine, and I wrote a children's book [The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw]. All at one time. And I was publishing other articles. I had four years where I must have knocked out millions of words. I tell ya, it's absolutely the best training a writer could get, to work on those magazines. You did everything."--Mario Puzo, in conversation with Josh Alan Friedman, from It's A Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (by Adam Parfrey, Feral House, 2003). During the 1960s, Puzo wrote for Magazine Management titles Male and Men.
(Fifteenth in a series. Cover scan courtesy CoverBrowser.com.)
4 comments:
I was really shocked to re-read The Godfather recently (found a killer Book Club edition with the original jacket, beautiful 70s-style)and remember how different it was from the films. The films are legendary, sure, but there's something to be said not only for the extravagant style Puzo had - Sonny comes off particularly larger than life - but also for the definition of character that comes through not only for Michael but also for the Don, who clearly states that all business is personal.
Oh yeah, Clay. I read the novel over Christmas break, 1990, and I couldn't put it down. The films (which I watched later) never matched the experience.
More wisdom from Puzo:
"Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the next day fresh, get rid of your wife."
- One of Mario Puzo's rules for writing a best-selling novel
;^)
Josh Alan Friedman has revisited his "men's adventure mag"/Magazine Management pieces on his blog, BlackCrackerOnline.com, in installments (including his complete interview with Mario Puzo). They're all really something.
You can check out the whole series here (newest first):
http://joshalanfriedman.blogspot.com/search/label/Magazine%20Management
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