Word: sicilian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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DIED. Joseph Zerilli, 79, godfather of the Detroit Mafia; of heart disease; in Grosse Pointe, Mich. A Sicilian immigrant who started as a construction worker, Zerilli rose to underworld prominence during the Prohibition era and reportedly built a narcotics, prostitution and loan-sharking empire that annually netted $150 million during the '60s. Although he repeatedly denied that he was involved in organized crime-maintaining that he was simply the owner of the Detroit Italian Baking Co.-FBI bugging transcripts linked him to the underworld. After the 1975 imprisonment of his son, Zerilli came under scrutiny by police investigating...
...books arrive like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend- the prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves. One evening in Sicily, he could look from his hotel balcony and "see the distant moth-soft dazzle of the temples'" at Agrigento. In a little Sicilian town called Chaos, the birthplace of Pirandello, Durrell watched sunlight "worthy of a nervous breakdown by Turner." When a local doctor was summoned to treat a tourist in Durrell's party, "he had a singular sort of expression, a sort of holy expression which one suddenly realised came from...
...difficult for Durrell to equal Bitter Lemons, his 1957 portrait of Cyprus. But then, Durrell lived for three years on Cyprus-owned a small old house, taught school, eventually worked for the British government as the island drifted into insurrection. Durrell went to Sicily as a tourist aboard the "Sicilian Carousel," a bus tour clockwise around the island...
Although he is a connoisseur of Mediterranean islands, Durrell sometimes seems to be laboring as hard as his red tour bus grinding up the mountain switchbacks. The reader must listen to Roberto, a wise and tactful Sicilian guide, discoursing on the first-aid kit aboard the bus; there is a pause while the French ladies buy postcards...
...Durrell cheats a bit in Sicilian Carousel. He asks at one point: "What was Sicily? What was a Sicilian?" He never comes close to an answer, except for certain gestures, shades of light, knowledgeable asides. Never mind. The questions will keep, and they were probably too solemn anyway...