Art & Entertainment: A New Kind of Mafia Story

By: Brent Robison

Saraceno by Djelloul Marbrook

In “Saraceno,” Djelloul Marbrook has crafted an entirely new variety of gangster tale. The story of a Mafia hit man and his friend, the grandson of the godfather, as each searches for his own true path, this compact novella is also a glass through which we see its author. “Saraceno” is an unlikely artifact: a Mafia story sculpted with the most refined of sensibilities from the clay of high art and philosophy, and then thoroughly suffused with love. This love is, first, the mysterious affection of a creator for his creations, a compassion for flawed humanity that drives the best fiction and makes its consumption a healthy activity. Second, it is the love of the characters for one another, from which redemption finally comes.

In Marbrook’s narrative, "Il Saraceno" is the secret nickname given to the handsome and deadly Billy Salviati by his Mafia master, connoting both menace and respect--the historical view of the Sicilians toward their one-time rulers, the Arabs. Billy’s life changes, as do the lives of his few friends, when he meets an elderly Jewish woman and is introduced to a library of the best writing and a rooftop full of roses. In an economical, erudite voice powered by an awesome vocabulary, Marbrook weaves bright strands of alchemy, art, literature, and religion into a dark Hell’s Kitchen fabric.

If you're an aficionado of the recent spate of gangster yarns masquerading as psychological explorations while glorifying brutality, “Saraceno” may leave your bloodlust unfulfilled. This is no “Sopranos,” no “Goodfellas,” no “Godfather Part X.” A nasty beating or two are in full view, but the much bloodier doings we know to be the currency of that world stay off-screen. In the same way that Paul Auster used the "detective" persona in his “New York Trilogy” to create works of art that delve into mysteries far deeper than "whodunit," and as a result got slammed by fans of the genre, so “Saraceno” takes higher aim, and may not be appreciated by those who prefer their reading tightly pigeonholed.

Djelloul (Del) Marbrook is the kind of writer I take real pleasure in discovering: a Hudson Valley neighbor and a mature artist whose rich body of work is finally coming to light. Marbrook’s poetry collection, “Far From Algiers,” is the 2007 winner of the Wick Poetry Prize and will be published in September 2008 by Kent State University Press. Other publications, both fiction and poetry, are forthcoming, and his blog is always insightful. See www.djelloulmarbrook.com.