Reviews for Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!

The average rating for Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-17 00:00:00 Terry Aubrey The major failing of this book is that Binelli does not ever fully commit to the material. Even reading the last pages, I was both unsure whether to, and wanting very much to, believe that this was alternate history, that this Sacco and Vanzetti did not live in a world that included "the other" Sacco and Vanzetti, in a kind of half-hearted (because there is no mention of the "real" S & V in the accounts of this S & V, as you would think there would be, if that is what Binelli was trying to do) double exposure. The frequent excursions into the "real" would seem to disallow that interpretation, and that is too bad. This book works, at least it works better, if the "real" is laid aside and we focus on a world in which the men who would have become two of the most famous political prisoners in U.S. history instead became famous buffoons of the silver screen. Binelli here encounters a bit of a problem, in that, as famous as the real Sacco and Vanzetti are, still most people will only know the tiniest bit about them, and will not see the parallels that he works hard to bring out. And so, the intrusions of trial transcript and history supplements that Binelli wants to have focus the reader on those parallels act instead to destroy the coherence of the story he is telling. This isn't a cubist painting, it's a two-way mirror: either we see ourselves, or we see what's on the other side, but we never see both. You just can't have both, at least, not the way that Binelli has set it up: if you want both, then you commit to both, Sacco and Vanzetti acknowledge that there is "another" Sacco and Vanzetti, and you explore the possibilities of such a world. The minor failing is that Binelli also has no story to tell. Like I said, it is a minor failing, and I would easily have overcome it if the idea had been maintained and certain boundaries (those above) had not been crossed. Nothing happens to Sacco and Vanzetti. And so, we don't really care a bit about them. Now, normally, I would be the last person to lodge such a complaint, but here, it is vital that we care about these characters, at least are interested in them. Binelli is writing a kind of encyclopedia of his altcon Sacco and Vanzetti, and so, if these two characters aren't interesting, there is nothing to distract me from the fact that they... aren't interesting. Like I said, Binelli has no story to tell, so there's no plot to distract me from the fact that these characters are not only poorly drawn, but unsympathetic and ultimately, dull and more than a bit tiresome. Aside from all of that, Binelli's idea is sound-- I mean, it could work, and he does some interesting things with it (viz. the bizarre sections in which we are locked into the logic of the characters of S & V's farces are simultaneously great and awful-- it is so oddly primal and brutish a technique that Binelli almost pulls it off. Unfortunately, I feel relatively certain that most readers are just left confused by this device), just not enough for me to give this book a second look or a more thorough read. You don't have to entertain, but in a book that is supposed to be about entertainers, it couldn't hurt.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-07-21 00:00:00 Michael Lockhart Seems like most of the reviews readers bothered to write about the book are generally negative, but I found it an absurdly enchanting book. The conceit - using "Sacco and Vanzetti" as a comedy team - is winning enough in its own right, and Binelli is able to sustain his clever ploy throughout. By mingling facts from the lives of the "real" S & V with those of their fictional counterparts, Binelli prompts the question: at root, isn't the impulse to throw a bomb the same as that to throw a pie? Of particular note are the chapters framed as "scenes" from various of the comedy teams' films. In these chapters, we are offered a banal scene from an early slapstick film - say, a banquet at which a food fight will break out - but the scene is approached in a way that renders Nic (Sacco) and Bart (Vanzetti) irrepressibly human, full of doubts and frailty. (Incongruity is key to this comedy.) I laughed a dozen times while reading the novel and it's a quick read ("speed plus incongruity equals comedy") worth your time.