Press for Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!
From the New York Times
"The premise of Binelli's first novel is unabashedly kooky. What if Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist duo whose execution in 1927 was a catalyst for leftist rage, were actually a slapstick comedy team? This notion may seem arbitrary, even trivializing, but it sets the stage for a sweeping narrative encompassing everything from the struggles of Italian-American immigrants to the social dynamics of pie fights... Jumping around in time, Binelli uses imaginary archival documents — film magazine interviews, journal entries and other texts — to depict two comedians, one fat and one thin, who do their time on the vaudeville circuit before graduating to Hollywood vehicles like 'Ventriloquism and Its Discontents' and the pie-fight class 'Sacco and Vanzetti Dessert the Cause'... Binelli effortlessly captures his characters' competing voices [with] joyful nostalgia, pinpoint characterizations and postmodern brio more than make up for a weak second reel."
— Etelka Lehoczky
From the San Francisco Chronicle
"The best thing about Binelli's novel is the writing, the combustive energy of his prose, the sheer inventiveness of the language. Since slapstick is all about action, it seems fitting that Binelli loves to turn nouns into verbs. A pastry chef's shirt-back is 'Rorschached with sweat.' From a tenement roof, the sky over Lake Michigan 'vista'd, unobstructed.' And like a poet, he leaves to the reader the work of piecing together and interpreting his fragments... A witty, original novel, ambitious in form and scope."
— Malena Watrous
From the Los Angeles Times
"Mark Binelli considers what history might have missed in his hysterically funny first novel... Instead of trotting out the infamous executionees for political grandstanding, Binelli re-imagines the duo as slapstick comedians à la Stan and Ollie... The conceit works extremely well, not only as an entertaining exercise in alternative history but also as a contemplation of comedy, ethnic definition and friendship... The novel's purposely disjunctive structure complements Binelli's robust sense of history; we catch small glimpses of the real Sacco and Vanzetti in the book's funhouse mix of fictional newsreels, movie magazine interviews and historical interludes...The results can be as dizzying as a Mack Sennett Keystone comedy, but the book's rollicking pace and even its touching moments and deeper implications — how do we really know anyone? — find ample breathing room in Binelli's shimmery postmodern stylings."
— Mark S. Luce
From Entertainment Weekly
GRADE: B+ "Edna St. Vincent Millay, Upton Sinclair, Woody Guthrie, Kurt Vonnegut, and Rage Against the Machine have all paid tribute to Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti, the Italian-born anarchists notoriously executed on a murder rap in 1927. Had all those artists collaborated on one project, it would be half as weird as Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! ... Its best riffs play like frisky, radical-chic remixes of the pop canon."
— Troy Patterson
From Publisher's Weekly
"For all the off-kilter humor, there's an undercurrent of social consciousness that calls attention to the xenophobia of the early 20th century (one of the pair's movies is called A Couple of Wops in a Jam), condemning the role ethnic prejudice played in the actual Sacco and Vanzetti's conviction and execution... An impressive first outing; ambitious in scope and brimming with sharp-edged black humor."
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Is history reliable? Can experience be anything but subjective? Are bias and prejudice always present? These questions, and dozens of others, get tossed around in Mark Binelli's utterly fascinating debut [in which he] reinvents a story of racial and social prejudice into a careening trip through vaudeville, screen comedy and the nuts and bolts of the perfect pie fight... The brilliance of Binelli's narrative is in the posing of such difficult and troubling questions in the guise of an effortless, imaginative show-biz biography.... Both playful and profound, Binelli subverts the structure of his work so that the journey through the narrative feels increasingly like the anarchy of its real-life figures.... A brave, heady and hilarious ride."
— Greg Changnon
From the New York Press
"Scarily clever... The fictional Sacco and Vanzetti begin to hew closely enough to their inspiration that the send up of yesterday's insularity and assorted prejudices demonstrates today's in clear and unfunny relief."
— Karen Schechner
From the Library Journal
STARRED REVIEW: "... first novelist Binelli satirizes and subverts stereotypes about Italian Americans, the entertainment industry, politics, and even the real Sacco and Vanzetti... The novel itself may seem initially anarchic, but Binelli's work is as intricately structured as his characters' knife acts and pie fights. Highly recommended."
— Jim Dwyer
From the Nashville Scene
"Appropriately, Binelli's own style is free to the point of lawless. In response to a feeble joke, the duo's manager chuckles 'at a volume equaling but not exceeding 10 percent of a genuine chuckle.' When a debutante hiccups in public, she blushes and looks 'like a small, downy creature startled by predators.' Categories of scream include 'A man being nailed to a crossbeam. A roomful of schoolchildren being denied cake'... In his day job, Binelli writes features for Rolling Stone. His first venture into fiction is a montage-narrative, film reviews, transcripts, diary entries, footnotes, interview excerpts, the occasional photograph and encyclopedia entries (complete with spurious Pauline Kael quotations). Historical figures include the Marx Brothers, Ezra Pound, Fatty Arbuckle. We visit the 1933 World's Fair and the funeral of Rudolph Valentino... The sad, lyrical tone of this comic novel remains with you long after you stop laughing."
— Michael Sims
August 2006 Booksense Pick
"This is a genre-bending, pop-culture referencing, intellectually challenging, roller coaster alternate history, with slapstick... A first-time novelist to watch!"
— Jessica Stockton, McNally Robinson Booksellers, New York, NY
From the Midwest Book Review
"A work of considerable talent and originality, documenting author Mark Binelli as a writer who has mastered wit and storytelling to produce a highly recommended, minor masterpiece of literate, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and thoroughly entertaining fiction."
From Time Out New York
FOUR STARS: "... a poignant, sometimes hilarious reflection on entertainment and the post-Ellis Island experience... [Binelli] matches hyperkinetic storytelling with an inventive prose style... In Binelli's hands, comedy and anarchy are close relatives."
— Rod Smith
From Context
"[Binelli's] novel, Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press this summer. Though his protagonists are named after a pair of infamous anarchists, they are, in this hilarious novel, silent film stars. And as they rise to fame and fall back into obscurity, slapstick becomes a stand-in for the reckless freedom of anarchy. This is Binelli’s first novel, and it marks the emergence of an important new voice in American fiction." Read the interview.