Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments vii
4. Introduction 1
5. Popular Fiction Criticism and American Careers
6. Popular Fiction: Taste, Sentiment, and the Culture of Criticism 19
7. Mario Puzo: An American Writer’s Career 51
8. Reading The Godfather : Critical Strategies and Theoretical Models
9. Bakhtin and Puzo: Authority as the Family Business 87
10. The Godfather and the Ethnic Ensemble 107
11. Barthes and Puzo: The Authority of the Signifier 149
12. Positioning The Godfather in American Narrative Study
13. The Godfather and Melodrama: Authorizing the Corleones as American Heroes 173
14. The Corleones as “Our Gang”: The Godfather Interrogated by Doctorow’s Ragtime 209
15. The American Inadvertent Epic: The Godfather Copied 229
16. The Godfather Sung by The Sopranos 253
17. Conclusion 291
18. Notes 299
19. Works Cited 317
20. Index 327