Double Agents in Exile

By John Elson

UNTO THE SONS by Gay Talese; Knopf; 635 pages; $25

Every American family, scholars agree, originally came from somewhere else. No wonder that questing for one's origins, personal or ethnic, has become a booming subgenre of the book biz. This sprawling, elegantly written example of the type is by a previous chronicler of the New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power) and the sexual revolution (Thy Neighbor's Wife). Unto the Sons is only marginally autobiographical; in larger measure it is the story of the great wave of Italian immigration that began around the turn of the century, as filtered through one family's experience, and of the hardscrabble world the voyagers left behind. Call it Roots dipped in marinara sauce.

Gay (ne Gaetano) Talese was born and raised in Ocean City, N.J., a seaside resort founded by teetotaling Methodist ministers who sought a prim and sober alternative to glitzy Atlantic City nearby. Growing up "olive-skinned in a freckle-faced town," young Gay felt himself an alien in Ocean City -- the butt, at parochial school, of ethnic slurs by Irish-American classmates whose brothers served with the American forces liberating Italy during World War II. He even felt somewhat of a foreigner in his own family. His father Joseph, a workaholic tailor and dry cleaner, was strict, austerely religious, often remote; his cool, fastidious mother Catherine froze at human touch, even when clutching hands were her own children's.

From his father Talese learned that he had a proud and fascinating heritage, albeit not untypical for a son of southern Italy. His surname derived from Telese -- from a Greek word meaning "to initiate to mysteries" -- a town in Italy's lower boot that had been partly destroyed by the Romans in 214 B.C. because its inhabitants were too friendly to Hannibal's Carthaginians. His family, however, was rooted in Maida, 65 miles northeast of the Strait of Messina, which separates Sicily from the rest of Italy. This is a craggy, nearly treeless countryside that has seen more than its share of history, good and bad. Maida was plundered frequently in pre-Christian times. The rebel slave Spartacus led his ragtag army through the area during his ill-fated battles with the legions of imperial Rome. The medieval German Emperor Frederick II, surrounded by a retinue that included his harem, passed by en route to the Sixth Crusade. And older men in Maida still recalled the day Garibaldi and his Redshirts rode through the village, vowing to free the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from lethargic Bourbon rule.

Life in Maida could be oppressive, governed as it was not only by absentee landlords and corrupt bureaucrats in distant Naples but also by unwritten codes, rituals and time-honored superstitions. Italian peasants, Talese notes, are profoundly (and no doubt justifiably) pessimistic; at times of trouble, the people of Maida would turn for succor to a favorite saint, Francis of Paola, whose decorated statue was paraded through the village on the shoulders of its men on great feast days. It is not surprising that some of Maida's sons were tempted by the riches and freedom that exile offered, leaving behind their wives as Italy's so-called white widows.

Much of Unto the Sons tells of three men and their fate in promised lands: Talese's father and his grandfather (also named Gaetano), who came to America, and a cousin, Antonio Cristiani, who found fame and fortune as a tailor in Paris. In different ways, all three were what the author calls "emotional double agents," loyal to both their adopted and their native countries. Ironically, the elder Taleses found work in a community that was almost as rigidly structured as Maida had been. Ambler, Pa., was a company town, designed by an eccentric entrepreneurial physician to house employees of his prospering asbestos firm. Lowest of the low, Italians and blacks were located nearest the factory and its carcinogenic fumes. Gaetano Talese spent a working lifetime in Ambler; Joseph, after a few months, escaped to the bracing air of Ocean City.

Unto the Sons has some arid stretches of canned history and too many conversations -- admittedly invented by the author -- that read like mediocre . fiction. But there are also some wonderful set pieces, including what may be the most delicious story about tailoring since The Emperor's New Clothes. When Joseph Talese was an apprentice in Maida, he accidentally cut a slit in the trouser leg of an Eastertide suit being made for a Mafia don. Disaster loomed: there was not enough material to craft new pants, and a disappointed "man of respect" might seek terrible revenge.

As siesta time approached, the tailor closed the shop and ordered his assistants to pray to St. Francis of Paola. In due course came inspiration: the tailor cut an identical slit in the pristine trouser leg and sewed up both with an elaborate bird-shaped design. When the astonished mafioso tried on his new suit, the tailor explained that wing-tipped knees were the latest fashion in the great capitals of the world. As proof, he pointed to his assistants: all wore trousers with the identical sewn design. The don left, happily in style.

Given such ingenuity, it is easily understandable how the people of Maida braved misfortune, and survived.