Роман "Все королівське військо", за який автор отримав Пулітцерівську премію, який вважається визначним для американської літератури, та має реальних прототипів, відправляє нас на самий південь США 30-х років минулого століття*. Оповідачем є безамбіційний та цинічний молодик на імʼя Джек Берден, що є рішалою у Хазяїна - корумпованого популістичного губернатора штату Віллі Старка, який робить "добро зі зла", бо лише так воно народжується. Джек частина "війська", бо він зі скрупульозністю історика за фахом та колишнього журналіста знайде бруд на навіть найчеснішого громадянина та правильний підхід до справжнього мораліста з непохитними ідеалами, хай би то був його найкращий друг.

Мене давно зацікавила книга, хоч лише про цю її політичну сторону й чув, але це лише антураж, декорації для справжньої історії. Тут ви прочитаєте також і про безтурботну молодість, перше кохання, зраду, дружбу, філософські роздуми та помилкові істини. Це роман про прийняття минулого та відповідальність за свої вчинки.

У нас книга українською була видана у 1986 році, що стало для мене сюрпризом, накладом, який, на жаль, є недосяжним для сучасного вітчизняного ринку, у 115 000 (!!!) примірників. Своєю чергою це дозволить вам зараз з легкістю знайти десятки оголошень на ОЛХ за смішну ціну та відчути запах старої книги (наче з бібліотеки взяв), який, fun fact, насправді виділяють часточки, утворені під час розкладання чорнила та сторінок. Переклад зовсім трохи архаїчний, але чудовий.

На останок ще попереджу, що перші 150~ сторінок були важкими, бо автор спочатку подає події нелінійно, з невеликою кількістю діалогів та купою описів та міркувань оповідача, проте після - не відпускає, мов напружений трилер.

* якщо в цій історії ми радше слідкуємо за життям вихідців з середнього та вищого класу, і політиканів, то роман "Грона гніву" Стейнбека, що відбувається на тому ж півдні в той самий час, розповідає про поневіряння найбідніших верств населення Америки. Можете також звернути увагу.

Kentucky-born 20th-century American writer and major academic literary critic Robert Penn Warren is still the only writer ever to have won the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction (for this 1946 novel) and poetry. Both a graduate of, and later a teacher at, Vanderbilt Univ. in Nashville, in the 1930s he was a part of the Southern Agrarians, a circle of Southern literary intellectuals centered around that university, and was one of the contributors, along with others in the group, to its 1930 manifesto of anti-capitalist conservatism, I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (which I've never read, but hope to eventually). Back in 1971, having learned about this group and having my interest piqued from reading The Conservative Tradition in America, I chose this novel for my book report in American Literature II as a college freshman. Although more than 50 years have elapsed since then, and I don't have a copy in front of me, I still recall it vividly enough to do it justice, in the sort of informal review that we ordinary readers share with each other here.

I've shelved this as "political fiction" (that is, fiction which is set in the world of politics). Set in 1930s Louisiana (he also taught for a time at Louisiana State Univ., so he was familiar with the life and culture of the state, including its politics), the book takes as its titular "King" a fictional governor of the state, Willie Stark. Aspects of Stark's personality and career are recognizably modeled on real-life Louisiana politician Huey "Kingfish" Long (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long ). However, Stark is not a carbon-copy clone of Long, and not the protagonist of the novel, though he's a major character. The actual protagonist, and maker of the central moral decisions here, is his young press agent, Jack Burden. But political programs and ideology as such aren't Warren's focus here. Rather, his major concerns are moral, philosophical, and even spiritual.

To the extent that there is a message about politics here, it's in keeping with those concerns. Willie Stark began his political career as an honest idealist who wanted to serve the interests of the people of his state. The seduction of power molded him into a corrupt demagogue who's only serving himself. Warren's not as interested in evaluating Stark's political program as in evaluating what his quest for power, and his rationalizations of all the shady machinations and mistreatments of other people that are part of that quest, is doing and has done to him as a person, and what it's doing to his henchmen -and to warn us that this sort of temptation is endemic in political life. But more broadly, he's also posing the questions of what matters most in life, whether right and wrong are real moral categories, and whether it's possible for a person to alter the direction of his/her life for the better. How Jack Burden will ultimately answer those questions is what the reader wants to find out. And while Warren wasn't necessarily a professing Christian, one of his characters here is a preacher who exercises some influence on Jack, and whose message is treated positively.

Racial relations aren't a focus here; they're touched on only peripherally. But Jack and some other characters at times use the n-word casually (which, sadly, did reflect realistic speech in that time and place), and there's also a passing narrative reference to black laborers as "darkies." This is obviously offensive to most readers, including me. Warren can be fairly criticized for this, and for the fact that the essay he contributed to the I'll Take My Stand collection was a defense of the noxious policies of racial segregation that prevailed in the Jim Crow South of that day. But my evaluation of the book overall recognizes positives that counterbalance the racial insensitivity. And to Warren's credit, he did rethink his attitude toward blacks, finally decisively repudiating segregation in a landmark Life magazine article in 1956, and went on to be a strong voice for racial integration and reconciliation. (In that respect, I would say that rather than rejecting his paleo-conservative beliefs, he became a more consistent exponent of their biblical roots.)

Just reread this. I'm not sure how many times I've read it, but it's been a while since I last did. This go around I was taken once again with how complex the issues of guilt and responsibility are in the novel, extending far beyond the problems facing Jack and Willie. The image of the spider web--with the idea that if you graze against one corner of the web the structure shakes--is a powerful representation of how actions reverberate over time with often unforeseen and catastrophic consequences. A great book, filled with great scenes and characters, even if it pushes towards the melodramatic in places. The opening scene describing the drive through the Louisiana countryside as well as the final sentence--"But that will be a long time from now, and soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time"--are simply magnificent.

There aren't tons of great American novels that deal in great depth with political figures, but this is one of them. Given the current political climate in the United States, this is a novel that should be on everyone's reading list.

This book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me in when I picked it up at the bookstore and I couldn't breathe until I finished it.

This is exactly what American politics, in the essential or fundamental sense, are about. Innocense gets you into the game, experience gets you further, ruthlessness gets you ahead.

Its narrated with zest and sarcasm and this particular version is great because it throws in all of Warren's original extras- references, allusions, extra plot points, details, etc. More of a good thing is always good.

Too bad Warren apparently never pulled anything like this off again. This is one of the centerpieces of American social culture. There's more than a little "Huey Long" in all our politics. Laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose....

The first movie, with Broderick Crawford, is pretty good. Avoid the remake of the movie with the great Sean Penn at all costs.

Много добра американска класика.

Препрочитал съм неведнъж тази книга и всеки път има нещо ново, което да грабне вниманието ми.

Препоръчвам!

I don't know how to write this review, so I probably won't write much of one. This book isn't perfect--it's too long, and I can think of several scenes that could be cut out without damaging the story, character development, and theme. However, even the parts that could be cut out are so beautifully written and funny and moving that I don't even care. I love Jack Burden. He's one of my all-time favorite first-person narrators, more beloved than Nick Carroway and Jake Barnes, even. He's up there with Fitzchivalry Farseer from Robin Hobb's Farseer novels. I love his sarcasm and wit and the way he tells the story--detached, distanced, yet clearly personal.

This book is known as a book about politics, but it's really not about politics. Politics comes into play, but so do football, Prohibition, and adultery. Among other things. This book is really about a man and his worldview and how it changes but mostly why it changes. How "Little Jackie" goes from being an Idealist to believing in the Great Twitch to finally believing in the power of will and doom and the interconnectivity of human life. I love these characters. It felt so good coming back to them. I love and hate Willie. I love Lucy and even Sadie. I like Anne, and I respect the Judge and Governor Stanton.

One thing I noticed this time was how much Adam is like Quentin from The Sound and the Fury and Ashley from Gone with the Wind. I also noticed how much Willie is like Jay Gatsby. It was fun to see those connections. There's a lot to analyze and discuss in this book, but I don't want to because I love it so much. I was worried I wouldn't like it as much this time around, but I liked it even more, maybe. The ending did disappoint me because I remembered it differently and also because it's a little long in wrapping up after the climax, but the last line is great, and I enjoyed the journey from beginning to end with these characters and this story.

If you have read this book already then I feel safe in saying that we probably haven't read the same book. In my attempt to fill voids in my literary history I picked this book up. It is one that I have always meant to read but just never got around to it. Inadvertently, I picked up a copy of the "Restored Edition" which is the book that the author actually wrote and submitted to his publisher for publication. The original 1946 edition of this book is 464 pages long while the book I just finished is 609 pages. At the end, the book also contains an original first chapter as well as an Editorial Afterward describing how this book was assembled and the process the original editors engaged in with the author to produce the 1946 publication. So what I read was the uncut, unedited version of Robert Penn Warren's masterpiece which is ironic because as I was reading the book I thought how much the book suffered from lack of editing.

I think the story of this book is fairly well known. It is a fiction loosely based on the life of Huey Long of Louisiana in the mid-1930's. It is the story of a populist politician and his rise to prominence in a corrupt political system and those around him that help and hinder the progress of his career. The story is also about the narrator, Jack Burden, who is an out of work reporter that goes to work for the protagonist, Willie Talos (Willie Stark was the name used in the original publication). To be accurate the story is more about Burden than about Talos but that is a matter for debate among readers. However, what struck me was another element of the story which I found to be as impressive and noteworthy as any of the characters and that was the writing of the author. I have never read a book written quite like this. The closest I can recall any author whose writing reached this level of fascination with me is Mark Helprin with his surrealistic novel A Winter's Tale.

initially, I was really annoyed with the writing. The author through his narrator goes into descriptive detail about completely insignificant things. This detailing can go on for a few sentences or paragraphs, or pages and in language so florid and generous that if it were sugar it could probably send you into a diabetic coma. The first chapter was the worst and as you might suspect I did not take advantage of the opportunity to read the original first chapter at the end of the book. The author seems to allow the reader to enter the brain of Jack Burden as he sees and thinks things and as he lets his mind meander across random thoughts and memories and perceptions. What does this have to do with advancing the plot? Nothing, but in retrospect it did flesh out the character of Jack Burden but I thought that could have been accomplished in fewer words and more directly. I was not surprised to learn that the original editors managed to cut nearly 150 pages from the author's manuscript. The author's writing was so excessive that it became quite noticeable and, to me, became as significant as any character in the story. Is that a good thing? I don't think so. An author's words like an artist's brush strokes should disappear and the picture they have either written or painted should should shine forth as a whole. I was frequently distracted by the beauty of the writing whose excess seem to diminish the further into the story I got but was no less masterful. I did get fully engaged in the story and the characters but I also found myself stopping to appreciate the author's skill. While I started off being annoyed at the writing I eventually came to admire it and the story and both made an impact on this reader. If you haven't read this book you should but I recommend finding an original version. Enjoy.

Look out world, I have a new favorite book.
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren may be long, but it is worth every word. This book begins as the story of Willie Stark, a politician who enters politics as an idealist but ends up becoming the very thing he fought against. Yet, this isn't so much Willie's story as the story of the narrator, Jack Burden, Willie's right hand man. Jack strives to be a cold-hearted cynic but he is driven by a moral idealism.
The writing style of this book is beautiful and poetic. It is thought provoking. I can't tell you how much I loved this story. There is so much character growth and so many different themes and ideas at play. There are stories within stories within stories. While this is the story of Willie Stark and Jack Burden, it is also very much the story of Sugar-Boy and Tiny Duffy and that random guy at the beginning whose son was a good boy who went to jail because of bad luck. Somehow, every character, not matter how brief their interaction with the plot, is brought to life and seems like a relevant, important part. And the women! I love how strong and different the women are. Lucy Stark and Sadie Burke and Anne Stanton represent such different perspectives yet have such critical, strong roles.
Most of all, though, I love Jack Burden. I love him for his character growth. I love him for his denial. I love him for his flashbacks and internal struggles and his loyalty. I love him because just when I thought the plot had forgotten or given up on something, it would circle around and complete itself and Jack's character growth would be right in the middle of that circle.
I love this book for its slow buildups and sharp twists. I love it for its poetic writing and the deep thoughts. I love it for telling an interesting story. I love it for its ending, which once again dips for a sharp, final, and oh-so-satisfying twist.
I don't think this is a book everyone will like. In fact, I am almost positive that if I had tried to read this book a few years earlier, I wouldn't have enjoyed it. However, I'm so glad I found this book when I did. I want a hard copy so I can read it again and savor it more.
So good.

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.)




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Ο άνθρωπος συλλαμβάνεται μέσα στην αμαρτία, γεννιέται μέσα στη διαφθορά και περνάει από τη μπόχα της πάνας στην αποφορά του σάβανου. Πάντα κάτι υπάρχει....

I first read this in Oct '06 and just re-read it for a discussion that was held in conjunction with this year's Louisiana Book Festival. It's amazing what one forgets in just 2 years, but what I didn't forget was Warren's lyrical way with words and structure, and the questioning, many times sardonic voice of his narrator, Jack Burden. It was a pleasure to read it again.

It took me so long to read this book in the first place because I thought it was going to be 'just' a fictionalized account of Huey P. Long. It's much, much more than that; and even though Long is the model for Stark, that facet may be the absolute least of what this novel is.

Yes, it is about politics (showing that what we have now isn't any different from the past and probably won't ever change), but it's also about power (and who holds it and why) and its effects, and the relationships between boys and fathers, boys and mothers, men and women. But in even more general terms, it's about the meaning of history (the past) - public and private - and its tangled, interwoven effects on the future.

This is a poetic tragedy of Greek proportions set in the Deep South of the United States. It is written with such lyrical quality that it attains a mystical charm.

Jack Burden is one of fiction's best shadowy narrators, and Warren's voice here is on par with the giants of world literature.