Uploaded on Jun 24, 2011
Distinguished columnist, author and frequent CUNY TV guest Jimmy Breslin joins Doug for a riveting conversation about his new book "The Good Rat: A True Story." The book follows the 2006 trial of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two former NYPD dectectives who worked on behalf of the New York Mafia. (Taped: 3/4/2008)
City Talk is CUNY TV 's forum for politics and public affairs. City Talk presents lively discussion of New York City issues, with the people that help make this city function.
City Talk is hosted by Professor Doug Muzzio, co-director of the Center for the Study of Leadership in Government and the founder and former director of the Baruch College Survey Research Unit, both at Baruch College's School of Public Affairs.
Watch more at www.cuny.tv/show/citytalk
City Talk is CUNY TV 's forum for politics and public affairs. City Talk presents lively discussion of New York City issues, with the people that help make this city function.
City Talk is hosted by Professor Doug Muzzio, co-director of the Center for the Study of Leadership in Government and the founder and former director of the Baruch College Survey Research Unit, both at Baruch College's School of Public Affairs.
Watch more at www.cuny.tv/show/citytalk
Available at the library... I'm not sure it will be as interesting without Breslin's but he doesn't seem to have 'spoken books' on tape.
The Good Rat
A True Story
Breslin, Jimmy
Book - 2008
This saga of the mafia's golden age and its subsequent demise is told through anecdotes to give a through-the-keyhole portrait of the mob as it lived and breathed. These are the stories traded by real snitches and crooks in infamous hang-outs like Pep McGuire's and the dog fights.
Publisher:New York : Ecco, c2008
Edition:1st ed
ISBN:9780060856663
Branch Call Number:ANF 364.106097 BRE
Characteristics: 270 p.
From the critics
Library Journal
Breslin (America's Mayor, America's President?: The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani) presents a personal view of the heyday and decline of the New York Mafia.
Its central framework is Burton Kaplan's testimony during the 2006 federal trial of police officers Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito. Kaplan, who worked for the Lucchese organized crime family, cooperated with authorities when he learned that Caracappa and Eppolito would implicate him for murder.
The excerpted trial transcript presents a detailed account of kidnapping, money laundering, drug dealing, obstruction of justice, imprisonment, and murder over the course of 50 years. Interspersed with the account of the trial are Breslin's asides and remembrances of organized crime in New York.
The narrative features figures such as Paul Castellano, John Gotti, and Joe Massino; even actor Robert De Niro makes a brief appearance. At the trial's end, Caracappa and Eppolito were convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy, while Kaplan was released on bail.
This is no scholarly study of the modern Mafia but a longtime observer's lively, well-written memoir of a notorious institution as it passes into history. Breslin fans will certainly enjoy; recommended for all libraries.
-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. at Parkersburg Lib.
-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. at Parkersburg Lib.
Publishers Weekly
Throaty New York dialogue is wonderfully realized by Richard M. Davidson, who leads the way for a small cast of narrators who assume various roles in this powerful Mafia tale. Davidson is so firm and solid in his delivery, he actually becomes the hard-nosed characters in question: Sammy "The Bull" Gravano and Gaspipe Casso. Kaipo Schwab offers a fantastic supporting performance as U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch, while Richard Mover takes on the role of turncoat mob associate Burton Kaplan.
Each character is so well developed and believable that listeners will suspect they're listening to actual recordings rather than outstanding performances. Breslin's words are perfectly suited to these fine readers, who make them their own in three stunning performances.
Simultaneous release with the Ecco hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 12, 2007). (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Each character is so well developed and believable that listeners will suspect they're listening to actual recordings rather than outstanding performances. Breslin's words are perfectly suited to these fine readers, who make them their own in three stunning performances.
Simultaneous release with the Ecco hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 12, 2007). (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
New York Times
WHEN Jimmy Breslin resigned from newspaper writing in 2004 after roughly a half-century and countless thousands of column inches, it was ostensibly to devote more time to books. But there might have been another reason. Like a novelist a great reporter needs his cast of characters - especially, for Breslin, the mobbed-up ones.
"The Good Rat," a book that combines personal anecdotes about the Mafia with the story of two really dirty Brooklyn cops, reminds us that by the time he quit, Breslin had lost his gangsters. Gotti was dead, Sammy the Bull was never going to see the Atlantic Ocean again, and who needed a newspaperman to explain anything when the Internet was teeming with Web sites like ganglandnews .com?
In the old days, Breslin writes in one of the book's many elegiac passages, "the air rippled with the last freedom to take everything and earn nothing." Breslin loved it when the biggest, baddest gangsters drank freely in the city's finest saloons and roamed the outer boroughs like sharkskinsuit potentates - the air crackled with electricity. Sure, they were lowlifes, but they had panache and provided Breslin with reams of great copy.
No one covered the mob like Breslin, mostly because no one was on a first-name basis with so many bosses and contract killers. As Breslin tells it in the book, one night Fat Tony Salerno ("the Tip O'Neill of the underworld") told the reporter he dressed like a bum. Salerno handed Breslin his tailor's card: "Tell him you want a suit made right away so you don't make me ashamed I know you."
Another time Jimmy Burke, the mastermind behind the $6 million Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, summoned Breslin for a meeting. He had a solution for Breslin's cancer-stricken wife, Rose. "The doctors know how to cure the disease," Burke said. "They won't do it unless they get paid. I got 35,000 with me. I'll give it to you, and you give it to the doctor tomorrow, and he'll cure her."
Don't get Breslin wrong. "The Good Rat" is not an apologia for old killers now departed. Its main narrative is devoted to the story of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two New York police detectives who were fingered as mob assassins a few years ago by Burton Kaplan, a drug dealer and friend of the Luchese crime family who dropped a dime on the cops in exchange for less prison time.
In 2006, Louis Eppolito, above, and Stephen Caracappa were convicted of eight murders. For Breslin, Kaplan is the worst kind of mobster: the crook who can't keep his mouth shut Working as an emissary between Eppolito and Caracappa and the Lucheses' underboss, Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso - can you guess how he got that nickname? - Kaplan hired Eppolito and Caracappa to kill at least eight people over seven years.
These corrupt cops besmirched their badges with their thuggery, and bullies who pretend to be the enemy of bullies are beneath Breslin's contempt. Breshn chronicles the cops' sordid tales with a mixture of awe, repugnance and perfect diabolical detail.
He remains a master of transforming crookery into opera. In recounting the murder and burial of a jeweler named Israel Greenwald in a Brooklyn parking garage, Breslin tells us the lot owner, Pete Franzone, "left the sixth grade at age 16 unable to read, but he could make out some letters. Over the years he deciphered T-O-W, which was good enough."
One day, a man named Frank Santora came by Franzone's auto shop in an Oldsmobile that needed work. Santora introduced his police detective cousin, Lou Eppolito. The mob soon had its hooks in Franzone's business, which proved useful after Greenwald's murder: "Franzone glanced around as he threw dirt and saw the seated Greenwald. He must be dead because he is not breathing. I will not be next Pete Franzone dug for his life in the hard dirt ... Santora brought in cement, lime and water from his trunk. The garage was baptized with its first mob death."
There's lots of ugliness here, including the killing of an innocent man who happened to share the name of someone Gaspipe Casso wanted dead. The "good" Nicky Guido, Breslin says, "has large eyeglasses and a delightful smile." The other Nicky Guido "is older, heavier, no need for glasses." One day, the good Nicky Guido was showing his uncle his new car. A slow-moving Cadillac pulled up, and "Nicky Guido did exactly what everybody would expect him to do. He threw himself atop his uncle just as the men started shooting."
These set pieces and many others in "The Good Rat" are note-perfect Breslin performances, though there's too much court transcription padding the book.
Breslin is right to think that nothing is as riveting as a rat's firsthand account of life in the mob, but after a while it feels like filler.
"The Good Rat" would have been better served if Breslin had distilled all of the testimony and hard-boiled it. He's too good to depend so heavily on the words of others. .
"The Good Rat," a book that combines personal anecdotes about the Mafia with the story of two really dirty Brooklyn cops, reminds us that by the time he quit, Breslin had lost his gangsters. Gotti was dead, Sammy the Bull was never going to see the Atlantic Ocean again, and who needed a newspaperman to explain anything when the Internet was teeming with Web sites like ganglandnews .com?
In the old days, Breslin writes in one of the book's many elegiac passages, "the air rippled with the last freedom to take everything and earn nothing." Breslin loved it when the biggest, baddest gangsters drank freely in the city's finest saloons and roamed the outer boroughs like sharkskinsuit potentates - the air crackled with electricity. Sure, they were lowlifes, but they had panache and provided Breslin with reams of great copy.
No one covered the mob like Breslin, mostly because no one was on a first-name basis with so many bosses and contract killers. As Breslin tells it in the book, one night Fat Tony Salerno ("the Tip O'Neill of the underworld") told the reporter he dressed like a bum. Salerno handed Breslin his tailor's card: "Tell him you want a suit made right away so you don't make me ashamed I know you."
Another time Jimmy Burke, the mastermind behind the $6 million Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, summoned Breslin for a meeting. He had a solution for Breslin's cancer-stricken wife, Rose. "The doctors know how to cure the disease," Burke said. "They won't do it unless they get paid. I got 35,000 with me. I'll give it to you, and you give it to the doctor tomorrow, and he'll cure her."
Don't get Breslin wrong. "The Good Rat" is not an apologia for old killers now departed. Its main narrative is devoted to the story of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two New York police detectives who were fingered as mob assassins a few years ago by Burton Kaplan, a drug dealer and friend of the Luchese crime family who dropped a dime on the cops in exchange for less prison time.
In 2006, Louis Eppolito, above, and Stephen Caracappa were convicted of eight murders. For Breslin, Kaplan is the worst kind of mobster: the crook who can't keep his mouth shut Working as an emissary between Eppolito and Caracappa and the Lucheses' underboss, Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso - can you guess how he got that nickname? - Kaplan hired Eppolito and Caracappa to kill at least eight people over seven years.
These corrupt cops besmirched their badges with their thuggery, and bullies who pretend to be the enemy of bullies are beneath Breslin's contempt. Breshn chronicles the cops' sordid tales with a mixture of awe, repugnance and perfect diabolical detail.
He remains a master of transforming crookery into opera. In recounting the murder and burial of a jeweler named Israel Greenwald in a Brooklyn parking garage, Breslin tells us the lot owner, Pete Franzone, "left the sixth grade at age 16 unable to read, but he could make out some letters. Over the years he deciphered T-O-W, which was good enough."
One day, a man named Frank Santora came by Franzone's auto shop in an Oldsmobile that needed work. Santora introduced his police detective cousin, Lou Eppolito. The mob soon had its hooks in Franzone's business, which proved useful after Greenwald's murder: "Franzone glanced around as he threw dirt and saw the seated Greenwald. He must be dead because he is not breathing. I will not be next Pete Franzone dug for his life in the hard dirt ... Santora brought in cement, lime and water from his trunk. The garage was baptized with its first mob death."
There's lots of ugliness here, including the killing of an innocent man who happened to share the name of someone Gaspipe Casso wanted dead. The "good" Nicky Guido, Breslin says, "has large eyeglasses and a delightful smile." The other Nicky Guido "is older, heavier, no need for glasses." One day, the good Nicky Guido was showing his uncle his new car. A slow-moving Cadillac pulled up, and "Nicky Guido did exactly what everybody would expect him to do. He threw himself atop his uncle just as the men started shooting."
These set pieces and many others in "The Good Rat" are note-perfect Breslin performances, though there's too much court transcription padding the book.
Breslin is right to think that nothing is as riveting as a rat's firsthand account of life in the mob, but after a while it feels like filler.
"The Good Rat" would have been better served if Breslin had distilled all of the testimony and hard-boiled it. He's too good to depend so heavily on the words of others. .
No comments:
Post a Comment