The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

This is a painfully hilarious book. Just after The Godfather, and long before the subsequent mafia deluge we would all see in books and movies, Jimmy Breslin created the worst crime family in the world, the hilarious Looking Glass image of the Corleones. They're dangerous, sure, but usually only by accident, and as long as you're standing in front of their guns you'll be allright. The Old Man is afraid his car is booby trapped, so every morning he has his wife start the engine for him. Big Jelly Catalano has a stolen circus lion in his basement that he feeds his victims to. An obituary for a gangster reads "He died of natural causes as his heart stopped suddenly when six men stuck knives into it." It's pretty over the top stuff, and not for the squeamish. It's one of the few books I've read that made me laugh so hard my chest was sore the next day. Highly recommended.

It may very well have turned out like the rollicking racketeers in this novel. Film has elevated the Mafioso to either a Brando-like brilliant elder statesman, calculating and controlled Pacino or overweight but sexy Tony Soprano. Breslin spins all those ideas off the map with a tale about "regular guys" who happen to be mobsters and are, in fact, none too successful at it. Graphic and brutal, while maintaining and air of both satire and farce, this story is, with all its laughs, probably closest to the truth. After you worship at the altar of Vito Corleone, meet this other family in a very funny novel in which every mobster has the IQ of Fredo.

If you are looking for a solemn documentary on the mafia, go elsewhere. If you want to be entertained by a brilliantly depicted cast of characters, this is for you. Fans of 'The Simpsons' should take a look at this. The more politically correct and squeamish should stay away. This is about gansters; bad people doing bad things. If you can't sit through Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" then don't even try to read this book.After 15 years of occasionally re-reading this book, it still makes me laugh out loud.

The finest comedy reveals truths that cannot be appreciated any other way -- such is the case with THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT, a book that has kept me laughing for years. As someone who grew up in New York in the 60's and 70's, I knew people just like many of the characters in this book. Breslin has captured a time and a mindset that are, believe it or not, already mostly gone. Debunking the glorification of mobsters in THE GODFATHER, here is a riotously funny but far more truthful portrait of the petty, far from brilliant men who made up so much of the mob. Breslin also manages to draw hilariously insightful portraits of many others who made up the New York of two decades ago. (One example: a courtroom scene involving a confrontation between a Jewish lawyer, a Greek judge, an African American defendant and a Sicilian grandmother has to be read to be believed!) These types are still present in NYC, but attitudes have changed enough to make this book a priceless time capsule. Being of Sicilian descent myself, I find no offense in Breslin's humorous depictions. From a mob funeral to the simple spectacle on an old woman shooing a dog off her front stoop, his word pictures are as insightful as they are uproarious. Yes, the comedy becomes downright farcical at times, but so does real life. I've read many of Breslin's books and columns over the years, and consider him a superb writer. For my money, GANG is still his best and funniest work, a book that remains delightful read after read.

I first read THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT when I was a teenager in Brooklyn, a borough well renowned as being where most gangsters lived. I grew up in Dyker Heights. Joe Colombo, the notorious Mafia chief in the early '70's, lived three blocks away from us. He was shot more than a few times in the head at an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally that he organized in the summer of 1971. He lived a few years as a cabbage after that. One time a truck going down his block backfired, causing a loud thunder. Six jukeboxes in jogging suits appeared on his front porch, aiming guns! Which reminds me of Jimmy Breslin's classic novel. Breslin's novel is hilarious, showcasing the Mafia as the laughable cretins that they are. Forget Puzo's THE GODFATHER. Too many people, after reading that romantic fiction, and especially after seeing the movie, grew to revere these baboons as some sort of elder statesmen with guns. Breslin tells the right story. They can't spell their names, and spend more time doing absolutlely nothing than the guy sleeping in the park. Breslin will make you laugh. And, again, he will make you think. It's a classic worth reading again!