PEZZONOVANTE
PEZZONOVANTE
Sent: 6/9/96; 2:30:12 PM
From: markman@batnet.com (markman)
>But Apple is like the pezzo navante, the white boy politicians who ran >Albany and Washington and Nevada. They don't respect us. They probably >don't respect each other either.
maybe. It seems a little off, but it's not wrong.
Puzo uses it as _pezzonovante_ (one word) simply to mean a person in a position to wield power (ninety-calibre... a big gun.)
It doesn't mean "white boy politicians." A paisan can be a pezzovovante too. In the novel Solozzo, the Turk, (the mafioso that Michael kills along with Captain McClosky) is called a pezzonovante.
A pezzonovante is someone with real power. In the novel, Wolz, the head of the studio (yeah, the guy with the horse-head) is called a _pezzonovante_, although the Godfather and Hagen wonder how someone who lets his lust for pretty women distort his sense of business could ever get to be one. Also, late in the book, the Don hopes that someday his descendents may one day get to be _pezzonovante_ with real power in the establishment.
There doesn't seem to be anything in the usage that requires a _pezzonovante_ to be abusive, disresctful, or obstructionist. Although, most of the time, the _pezzonovante_ mentioned in the Godfather do happen to be getting in the way of Corleone.
--
Another point:
You were rather cavalier in gliding past the reasons that the Don wouldn't share his government contacts with the other families. ("he had his reasons"). Well, the reasons are rather important.
In both the novel and the screenplay the reason is an either a prudent one. The proposition that Solozzo brought was that the Don support the families in the drug trade. Corleone felt that here was something that the politicians would not be able to sanction. He didn't want to risk his influence on what he believed was a losing game.
When he finally made the peace, it wasn't out of respect or enlightenment. It was out of having been fought to a stalemate. The other families forced his hand.
M
|
This page was last built on Sat, Dec 14, 1996 at 8:26:12 AM. The messages in this site are responses to DaveNet essays. |