This Pulitzer Prize winner was not a disappointment. It is a beautifully written master class in plot, description and character development. Set in the late 1930s, this is the story of the rise and fall of the southern politician Willy Stark as told by Jack Burden, the former reporter who now works for Stark. Both Stark and Burden are rich, complex characters and the arcs of their lives are as compelling as Greek tragedy. It’s really a wonderful book .

Some books are like banquets; this book is like those.

When it was published in 1946, a critic for the NYT wrote that it "isn't a great novel or a completely finished work of art. It is as bumpy and uneven as a corduroy road, somewhat irresolute and confused in its approach to vital problems and not always convincing. Nevertheless, [it is] magnificently vital reading, a book so charged with dramatic tension it almost crackles with blue sparks, a book so drenched with fierce emotion, narrative pace and poetic imagery that its stature as a 'readin' book', as some of its characters would call it, dwarfs that of most current publications."

Well - gee, gosh, Mr. NYT Critic, you not only make some awkward observations but you sound like you're of two minds: it's not a great book, you say, yet you go on to describe it the way many would describe a great book!

This *is* a great book - easily as great as Maugham's 'Of Human Bondage', Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov' or Steinbeck's 'East of Eden'.

Many presume this is a book about politics (no doubt due to the film version - which needs to highlight that aspect in service to distillation). RPW denied it's a story of politics, but that he used politics as a framing device for a larger theme. I believe that larger theme is 'conscience' - that little courtroom of fairness in our brain, in which we are judge and jury. Whether we use it or not, we all (presumably) have one of those (of some sort). Question is: to what degree do we allow it room to govern in our decision-making lives? ~especially when it comes to elements of corruption, to what is capable of compromising us? Do we give it full sway? Do we use it forcefully? Or do we cower from it and later face regrets?

In the novel, conscience is given embodiment in the character of our narrator, Jack Burden (an 'everyman' name if there ever was one). Noncommittal by design, Jack is equal parts romantic and cynic. He became disillusioned about life at an early age (during a bout with young love) and grew up believing human beings can never realize their potential - not in the way that matters most, at least to Jack. Jack believes that all people (including himself) are all too clumsily and imperfectly human. And that annoys him. It upsets his poetic soul. Periodically he shuts himself off, shuts himself down from observing what he would consider 'the madness' of life.

But it's not long - each time - before Jack is again swept up in the maelstrom. He has this compulsion about the road-wreck drama of life - he can't look at it full-on and he can't look away.

If you've only seen the film version of RPW's book, then you've seen the part that the author claims the book is not about (since the film focuses on the life of politics inspired by the career of Huey P. Long - who went from Louisiana governor to U.S. senator in the mid-'30s). There wouldn't be anything wrong with that, necessarily - it's a terrific and compelling movie on its own, and deservedly won several Oscars.

RPW's book offers much more - mainly an exquisite, deceptively simple writing style (which can often, by turns, make you want to speed up and slow down), intertwined seamlessly with a wonderfully poetic texture in its descriptive passages.

Read this passage:

A woman only laughs that way a few times in her life. A woman only laughs that way when something has touched her way down in the very quick of her being and the happiness just wells out as natural as breath and the first jonquils and mountain brooks. When a woman laughs that way it always does something to you. It does not matter what kind of a face she has got either. You hear that laugh and feel that you have grasped a clean and beautiful truth. You feel that way because that laugh is a revelation. It is a great impersonal sincerity. It is a spray of dewy blossom from the great central stalk of All Being, and the woman’s name and address hasn’t got a damn thing to do with it. Therefore, that laugh cannot be faked. If a woman could learn to fake it she would make Nell Gwyn and Pompadour look like a couple of Campfire Girls wearing bifocals and ground-gripper shoes and with bands on their teeth. She could set all society by the ears. For all any man really wants is to hear a woman laugh like that.

Does the novel read that well in its entirety? Of course not. But the undulations of prose make sections like this so much more powerful. We read for entertainment. We read for escape. We read to better understand ourselves. And, sometimes, we read a book, and it changes us. People will comment heavily on the political nature of All the King's Men. It is, after all, a book about politics. But it is also a book about love, about loss, and about being a man. It is a book that made me realize how much I miss hearing that laugh. And now it's time to go and find that laugh once more.

For my money, I think this is the greatest book in Southern Literature exceeding Faulkner. All the King's Men is much more than the usual purported centrality of Willie Stark's political motives and final demise, and the usual shallow analogies to Huey Long; if anything, the novel's narrator, Jack Bundren, is a cynical person whose life has unraveled. I think the one scene with Jack's father will always stay vivid as the epitome of Southern Grotesque. It is a multi-layer novel--with clarity and a moral revelation. The first paragraph is riveting, and last paragraph unforgettable.

Какви обрати само! Някак бях пропуснала тази класика, а и си мисля, че нямаше да ми хареса като бях по-млада, четенето ѝ изисква по-зряла възраст и житейски опит. Много обичам "лучени" книги - пласт върху пласт от идеи и внушения. За много неща се замислих по време на прочита, а това е смисълът на четенето за мен (освен ескейпизъм). Допаднаха ми героите и как бяха развити, тази спирала нагоре и надолу, минало, настояще и бъдеще в една точка. Отначало не бях убедена, че тази книга е за мен, не си падам особено по политически истории, обаче към края на първа глава авторът ме спечели с една-едничка сцена.

Особеност на книгата са огромните глави (към 50 страници, че и повече), това ми затрудни четенето, както и това, че прескачането във времето изисква концентрация. На места авторът създаваше наистина невероятно колоритни описания. Класика с главно К, бих препрочела за по-добро осмисляне, а напоследък с остаряването (толкова малко време, толкова много книги) избягвам да препрочитам. Пет звезди.

The image I got in my head that day was the image of her face lying in the water, very smooth, with the eyes closed, under the dark greenish-purple sky, with the white gull passing over.


This is probably the first fairly good review I ever wrote on Goodreads (or anywhere, of course). Seems hardly anyone has ever seen it. Ran across it tonight in an old Word doc and thought I'd repost it. The book is a classic.


I first read it about 40 years ago. Having just finished my second reading (I think only two), I think the book is a better novel than I remembered it as, though I've always felt it was a "five-star" book.

Of the two stories in the book (the story of Willie Stark, based loosely or perhaps not so loosely on the life of Huey Long, and the story of the narrator Jack Burden, based presumably on the imagination but perhaps also on some of the artistic and philosophical beliefs of the author), the former is more entertaining, and is easier to understand. However, having just a few days ago watched the Ken Burns 1985 PBS documentary on Huey Long, I am struck now that Warren's Willie Stark has nowhere near the extremes of "good" and "evil" that Long was perceived to have by his supporters and enemies. Willie Stark is a very tame Huey Long, and the real Huey Long was more politically interesting than the fictional Willie Stark is. The question that arises from Huey Long's career is, Can a good man (woman) effect great (and good) changes, and still be true to his good nature? Or does the real world in which the changes need be made ineluctably force them to be made by resorting to force, the illegal (or extra-legal), and ultimately violence? These questions are not answered in All the King's Men, and I'm not sure that they are even posed. Willie Stark, it seems to me, is brought down not by an excessive desire to change the power structures of his state (though that plays a part), but much more by a confluence of unlikely and unlucky events.

The latter story I feel to be not quite as entertaining, but perhaps that's because it's a more difficult story to dig down through and unravel. I think it's also because much of this story, which one could think the author might have meant to illustrate some "truths" about life that the first story didn't touch on, requires that the reader ferret out what those truths are, whether he or she agrees that they are truths, and whether he or she finally judges that even if they are true, they are significant truths. Or perhaps it's best (and maybe more true to what Warren meant to do in the novel) to simply read Jack's story, and the conclusions he draws about life, as simply the tale of a fictional character and his search for personal truth, in which case we can judge this story by whether the character and his tale are both interesting and believable. On these criteria I would give the Jack Burden story an "A". (Even though, by the way, I wouldn't argue that Jack is a very likeable character. He has an awful lot of faults actually, but these are believable human faults.)

On a personal note, I found it interesting how much of the book I didn't remember from the first time. Essentially, other than the broad sweep of the story, I remembered very little. In particular, I remembered little of the last chapter, I remembered nothing of chapter 7 (Jack Burden's flight to California, and the story of his falling in love with Anne), and I had no recollection that I had ever felt the writing in chapter 4 to be so evocative (I think now) of Faulkner. Of course when this book was published in 1946, Robert Penn Warren surely had read most, if not all, of Faulkner's fiction, being as he (Warren) was among a group of Southern writers and poets who had been making waves for several years by then.

I’ll end with a quote from chapter 3. This quote to me is extremely poignant, and expresses a psychological truth which I feel very strongly; it also reminded me of Proust. It comes in a section where Jack is reminiscing about growing up in Burden’s Landing with Adam and Anne Stanton. The three of them swam in the Bay together often, and one time they were swimming in very calm waters under a darkening sky.

What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.
The image I got in my head that day was the image of her face lying in the water, very smooth, with the eyes closed, under the dark greenish-purple sky, with the white gull passing over.

(Unbelievably, before I typed in this quote, I wanted to check the prefatory sentences I’d written, particularly whether the name of the town was Burden’s Landing. So I Googled “Burden’s Landing”, and the third site was burdenslanding.org, which contains this very quote, except for the last sentence. So I didn’t have to type the whole blamed thing, just cut and pasted most of it. Obviously others have been struck by it.)




. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: To the Ends of the Earth a Sea Trilogy
Next review: Selected Tales Henry James
More recent review: The Poisonwood Bible

Previous library review: Poems Wallace Stevens
Next library review: The Age of Innocence

Too Deep for a Movie

Amazon lists this as a movie tie-in edition, and I must admit that I bought it because I had been attracted by the movie trailers, but wanted to read the original first. Now having done so (and still not seen the film), I cannot imagine how it would be possible to translate any but the broadest outline of this subtle masterpiece into cinematic terms.

For one thing, how could one capture Robert Penn Warren's superb style? Not for nothing was he to be made the first American Poet Laureate; the story is enfolded in broad tracts of rich Southern prose-poetry, capturing the climate, the country, and the lives of the ordinary people who dwell in it. For example, consider this paragraph on page 33:

It looked like those farmhouses you ride by in the country in the middle of the afternoon, with the chickens under the trees and the dog asleep, and you know the only person in the house is the woman who has finished washing up the dishes and has swept the kitchen and has gone upstairs to lie down for half an hour and has pulled off her dress and kicked off her shoes and is lying there on her back on the bed in the shadowy room with her eyes closed and a strand of her hair still matted down on her forehead with the perspiration. She listens to the flies cruising around the room, then she listens to your motor getting big out on the road, then it shrinks off into the distance and she listens to the flies. That was the kind of house it was.

I quote this in full partly so that readers may get a sense of the riches that are in store: a style that is leisurely and expansive while remaining utterly straightforward. I quote it also because, like so many descriptions in the book, it captures a place in terms of the people who inhabit it, with a feeling for the rhythm and values of their lives. In that this is a political book at all, the charismatic politician at its center, the populist Willie Stark (loosely based on Louisiana's Huey Long), first derives his strength from just such a grassroots understanding of the ordinary people he represents.

But I question whether All the King's Men is a political book, at least in the sense that the movie trailer appears to be marketing it. When the novel opens, Willie Stark is already the Governor of his state, and even in flashbacks there are very few scenes of him campaigning or working up crowds with his oratory. Similarly, although we see him quietly collecting information with which to dissuade his foes or manipulate his allies, any graft or corruption remains mostly beneath the surface, and Stark's descent into demagoguery is nothing compared to what was going on at the same period (the thirties) in Germany or Italy. Warren does paint a very clear picture of old-style machine politics, with Stark at the center of his web, surrounded by a small circle of "the boys." But very little of the drama is played out in the public arena, but rather in the lives and loyalties of a small group of childhood friends from moneyed backgrounds quite different from Stark's own, who nonetheless get drawn into his orbit.

Chief among these is the narrator, Jack Burden, who gradually emerges as the principal character in the novel. I quote the passage of description above because it demonstrates Jack's voyeurism. Not only does he see a farmhouse and imagine the woman inside it, but he also writes a little story about her. This characteristic continues throughout the book; Jack's imagined stories are plausible, for he is very perceptive, but they are all things that he sets in motion and watches from the outside. A failed PhD student of history, he first encounters Willie Stark while covering him as a newspaper reporter, and his objective viewpoint, his insight, and his talent for uncovering facts make him very useful to the rising politician.

While Jack remains outside the political machine, fascinated but aloof, Willie Stark gradually invades Jack's own circle from his childhood home at Burden's Landing. Chief among these are Adam and Anne Stanton, the children of a former Governor, and Judge Irwin, who served as a moral guidepost and second father to Jack. Before even the first chapter is out, you know that Jack's personal allegiances will be tested. You gradually realize that because Jack is a watcher and not a doer he will fail these tests in many respects, though not utterly.

In the end, this book is about Jack's journey to self-knowledge. Willie Stark's story continues to propel the plot, but he fades into the background as a force, remaining more as a touchstone for all that Jack is and is not. In movie terms, the part requires a star performer, but it is not a starring role. By contrast, Jack is central, though anything but a star. His story would be hard to realize on the screen because so much of it is internal: a moral journey played out in memories, long (sometimes overlong) paragraphs of meditation, and occasional episodes of action, brief but brilliantly realized. A true cinematic adaptation of this book would concentrate almost entirely on personal relationships. It might have elements of romance, but it would be neither an action movie nor a thriller. It would be political only in the sense that politics highlights the question of how good intentions may lead to evil ends, and bad means may be necessary to achieve good results. But this moral conundrum is eternal, and Robert Penn Warren has found a wonderfully intimate and subtle means of addressing it.

Much more than just a great political novel or a great story, All the King’s Men digs deep into the human psyche. Can we always know the dividing line between good and bad? Can good come out of evil? If not how do we ever rise above our weaknesses? Is our identity built on our parents, our heritage? What if we find out our father was not who we thought. Does that make us different? Do we really know ourselves, our friends, or do we reference past images? Are we the same person as an adult that we were as a child? If not when does one person end and the other begin? When confronted by emotional pain and conflict do we become insular and dehumanize others or do we actively engage and work through it? When are the consequences of our actions our responsibility and when are they the responsibility of others that act upon them? If you enjoy tackling questions like these, Warren’s masterfully written book is a must read.

We are presented Willy Stark, based on former Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long, who fights to help the poor and oppressed and in so doing succumbs to immoral methods to fight a corrupt political establishment. Is this wrong if there was no other way to do it? But once adopting expedient means such as bribery and intimidation Willy cannot turn back. Is exploitive political leadership inevitable, regardless of the original intent?

This novel is excellent on many levels. First it is an engaging story of political intrigue and the individual’s search for identity and place in the world. Second it is the stories of the characters (Willie Stark, Jack Burden, Cass Mastern, Tom Stark, Anne Stanton and more), tightly woven to produce a single narrative and support a common theme. That a novel of this length and complexity had every storyline lead to the same important ideas and questions is remarkable. Nothing seemed superfluous. Third, the prose is exquisite without ever seeming excessive, another rare quality. The descriptions of people and settings create a vivid picture of life in the Louisiana of the 1920’s and 1930’s. It’s easy to see why Robert Penn Warren was the USA’s first poet laureate. Fourth, All the King’s Men is deeply philosophical and Warren cuts to the chase. Take this passage, “…no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.”

Recommended for the reader who wants to explore the concept of personal responsibility and contemplate the meaning behind our thoughts and actions, who loves superbly crafted prose turned into a purposeful and compelling story and who appreciates history brought vibrantly to life.

1.5

I'll start by saying I get why this is a classic. It hits all those standard marks that most classics do: heavy symbolism, moral struggles (insert 'truth-seeking' and good vs. evil), unique characters, and a historical backdrop. Factor in Warren's gift for writing (it truly is 'poetic'), and you'd think you have a winning combination. Not so for me. For as sharp and introspective as the narrator was, I found him (and most everyone in this shambling plot) absolutely insufferable.
It's really a shame, because I wanted to like this book.

(Overall vibe of narration reminded me a bit of the Great Gatsby. Jack Burden resembles Nick Carraway in his observations.)

What I liked:

1. When the descriptions were good, they were *good.* I am not surprised in the slightest that he was the first poet laureate in the US. He had a gift. His turn of phrase was sharp and clever, and man can that man build atmosphere. That said... see the flip side of this gift under the 'What I didn't like' section.

2. Vocabulary: I learned a lot of new words while reading this. So that was pretty cool.

What I didn't like:

1. Rambling and bombastic (-1.5 points): I, like most people who read this, appreciated Warren's descriptive/poetic skills, but good God, sometimes I wish he would have just put it to rest. You know how someone might have a really great singing voice? Now imagine that they refuse to speak normally, and they'll ONLY sing at you in conversation. That's what this was like. I do not need an entire page describing "meaty faces" and sweaty lips.
Here's his description of a wink: "Inflamed, beclouded window of Mr. Duffy's soul, and the next you observed the puffy and slightly granulated membrane descend with deliberate emphasis, then twitch upward in its well lubricated track." <-- the whole book's like that. If you like that, you'll love this.

2. Depiction of women in the book (-1 points): I know this book is dated. But that doesn't mean I'll tolerate poor depictions of women in it any more than I usually would. We had the sharp, cunning Sadie Burke (who of course couldn't be pretty and eventually ended up enrolling herself into a sanatorium because she felt too guilty about seeking vengeance on Willie Talos, her ex-lover). We had the abused housewife, Lucy Talos who would be loyal and supportive to her jackass of a husband (Willie Talos) to the very end. We had the dream girl - picture of innocence - Anne Stanton. And let's not forget Jack Burden's ex-wife, whom he spent PAGES referring to as a fuck machine. Honestly, that last one I found the most disgusting.

At the 65% mark, Warren wrote: "...as long as she was simply a well dressed animal, as long as she was really a part of innocent non-human nature, as long as I hadn't begun to notice that the sounds she made were words, there was no harm in her and no harm in the really extraordinary pleasure she could provide..."

There were no other roles for the women in this book. They were either of the above female archetypes, or they were minor, background characters.

And let's not forget when Cass Mastern went searching for the slave woman that his mistress sold into prostitution and stumbled upon a bunch of perverts inspecting a naked slave woman. Because we needed that in this book. That was necessary.

On that note, POC were very poorly represented in this book (N-word thrown around.). Again, I know this book is dated (published initially in 1946), and I know we're in a southern American setting, but it doesn't mean I liked reading it any more than I normally would.

3. The summary didn't match the plot (-.2): I loathe when summaries don't match the books they describe. Based on the synopsis of this book, I seriously thought this was going to be about the rise and fall of Willie Talos. I thought this was going to be a book with plenty of clever political maneuvering, something akin to House of Cards. It very much was not. Not only was this focused MUCH more on the narrator, Jack Burden, but it was also more focused on philosophizing about God and good v. evil and the past and the present, etc, etc, etc. It just didn't end. And by the way, I also hated Jack Burden (see next point)

4. The characters sucked (-.3): There was literally no one to root for. Jack Burden reminds me of an angsty 15-year-old. Willie Talos reminds me of a hardheaded lunatic with good intentions. Sugar Boy was just... what? There for laughs? Sadie Burke was annoying, like Joan Callamezzo from Parks and Rec, except less bubbly. The Stantons were bores. I mean... I just didn't like any of them. It's really hard to trudge through that much literary verbiage for people you don't even like. I didn't feel bad at all when anyone died. I felt relieved, actually, because the book was almost over. There were moments when I was curious about the plot, like when I wondered if Jack Burden would end up with Anne Stanton after all, but if I never found out, I would have been perfectly fine with that.

5. All the rest (-.5):
- Constant perspective changes
- Extensive tangents
- Unnecessary details that detract from narrative
- Lack of quotation marks for some dialogue
- Lack of a clear conflict that drives plot of book (Jack's finding himself or wondering about his past wasn't compelling enough of a conflict for me. I wanted to know about the rise of Willie Talos. Instead I was sucker-punched with Jack Burden's numerous trips down memory lane.) This isn't always a deal-breaker for me (I really enjoyed East of Eden, even before Cathy was introduced as an enduring antagonist), but this book just didn't work for me.

Apilado tenía este libro desde hace años, esperando su momento. “La mejor novela política” se dice de ella. Y claro, a mí no me gusta la política. Como para leerme un tocho de 700 páginas.
Pues vaya sorpresa. Esto es mucho más que una novela política. Es un novelón, una gran historia de personajes. Y comienza de forma gloriosa, como estas películas de Scorsese en las que un narrador-protagonista te va presentando los personajes, todos carismáticos, todos interesantes, y te va contando una gran historia, con todo lujo de detalles. Y ya no puedes soltarla.
El estilo es clásico pero moderno. Ya no se escribe así de bien, joder. Es una novela atemporal. Y más que una temática política, lo que encontramos son las motivaciones de sus personajes para hacer política, la vocación, los dilemas éticos, las relaciones personales, la amistad, el amor de “todos los hombres” no del rey, sino del Jefe, un trasunto de político-mafioso-predicador, en torno al cual se cruzan las vidas y designios de los demás personajes.
Si no le pongo 5 estrellas, es porque hay ciertas partes melodramáticas en torno al amor juvenil especialmente, que me han parecido un poco lentas y aburridas. Por todo lo demás, puedo aseverar sin temor a equivocarme, que he leído, un Clásico con todas las letras, un novelón. 4.5/5

A rambling, nonsensical, semi-biographical piece of literary garbage.

I had two different experiences with "All the King's Men."

I read about 60% of the book, admiring some of it, like the wit and politics. And the playful language.

The saws sang soprano and the clerk in the commissary passed out the blackstrap molasses and the sowbelly and wrote in his big book, and the Yankee dollar and Confederate dumbness collaborated to heal the wounds of four years of fratricidal strife, and all was merry as a marriage bell. Till, all of a sudden, there weren’t any more pine trees.

But I also found myself getting very impatient. I felt like Warren would occasionally be possessed by the urge to go on and on and on, that same prolixity I liked about the excerpt above got out of control: ...there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a cold rubber glove. It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean and pick it up, but don’t open it yet, not for a second. But the clammy, sad little foetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn’t want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know...

The more of this kind of thing I encountered, the more I was tempted to move on to something else.
Reading the book was, as one GR friend put it, exhausting. I didn't know whether the problem was in me -- that I've lost the ability to read slowly and carefully. Age maybe. Diminished intelligence. Or years of looking at words on screens. Whatever the source, it was definitely influencing my appreciation of this modern classic in a very negative way.

I didn't give up immediately, though. I was curious to see if listening to the book instead of reading it might make a difference. Fate smiled on me, because as it happens the book is (as I write this) available as a free download from Audible. So I put aside the text and listened to that last 40%. And loved it. All the things I missed on the page, or that irritated me, came alive. The humor, the noir voice (to my ears, as if Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett had collaborated), the echoes of Southern Gothic, the method behind narrator Jack Burden's philosophizing and apparent insensitivity, the Shakespearian sweep of the novel, the revelatory ebb and low of characters' emotions, their secrets and and vices and vulnerabilities, the lively dialogue... it was glorious. Reading, I found myself skimming whole paragraphs, not interested in spending time with Jack Burden, whom I thought a jerk. Listening to Michael Emerson read the book, though, that was a completely different experience. The second excerpt (above) was meaningful and deliberate to my ears, and Burden's being a jerk became something else. Yes, the writing can be excessive, and the book goes on longer than I thought it should, and the language bears the weight of its time, but somehow the novel transcends all this.

I won't presume to suggest that my experience should encourage people to listen to rather than read Warren's novel, but I can say with confidence that, thanks to Mr Emerson, I did recognize that "All the King's Men" is a truly wonderful book. 4.5 rounded up