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I remember that when I first read All the King’s Men as a senior in college (too many years ago), I thought it was a very good political story, but I don’t think I had a full appreciation of how good or complex the book is. Now, having re-read it at a much later point in my life, I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.
It is, first of all, beautifully written, with language that often approaches poetry—not surprising given that Robert Penn Warren won major literary awards for poetry as well as fiction, and shortly before the publication of this book was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1944–1945). Second, the story told in the novel, which is centered around two very different characters, Jack Burden and Willie Stark, whose lives intertwine, is compelling and complex, with a non-linear timeline that at first seems confusing but ultimately works to enhance the reader’s understanding of the connections between the characters and events. Third, through the narrator, Jack Burden, Warren explores many existential questions about truth, history, responsibility, guilt, good and evil, and more.
The novel is often characterized as a fictional political biography of the Huey Long-inspired character Willie Stark. But while Stark’s political career is one focus of the book, I think Jack Burden is the main character. As the narrator, I guess he has the inside edge on capturing the reader’s attention. But I found his journey in the course of the book to be fascinating, even though in many respects he is not all that likable.
As a young man, Jack has no purpose and no direction; he is drifting through life with no real idea of what he wants to do. All he really knows is that he wants to distance himself from his past—from the father who abandoned him when he was six years old, from the mother who he thinks never really loved him, and from the genteel surroundings of the community in Burden’s Landing (named for his family) in which he grew up. In college, Jack is drawn to idealist philosophy: “If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn’t real anyway.” This philosophy is, of course, convenient for a young man without direction.
After attending and hating law school, Jack studies history in graduate school but leaves before completing his dissertation. He then becomes a newspaper reporter and soon meets nascent backwoods politician Willie Stark. Jack admires Willie as a man of action, energy, and drive, and ultimately becomes his right-hand man and sometime fixer. Jack’s idealist philosophy serves him well in this role, but he feels conflicted by certain tasks that Willie asks him to perform, especially when he is asked to dig up dirt that has the potential to injure people he cares about.
But as a trained historian and a journalist, Jack is also drawn to knowledge and truth. So even though one part of him doesn’t want to dig up the dirt and he suspects he won’t like it if he’s successful, he can’t resist. “I knew that I had to know the truth. For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge to blackness. For there is a blackness of truth, too.”
Ultimately, learning the truth unlocks some secrets of Jack’s past and allows him to come to terms with the things he had been running away from. Jack is able to change his perspective about several important people in his past and begin to build a future. Other characters are not so fortunate. Willie Stark becomes a victim of his ambition, and Jack’s boyhood friend Adam Stanton, who also learns the truth, can’t handle it. As Jack tells Adam’s sister (and Jack’s future wife), Anne, Adam “‘is a romantic, and he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn’t conform in any respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away. Even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath. Which,’ I added, ‘it always does mean.’”
Early in the book, in a fine bit of foreshadowing, Warren has Jack ruminate about the relationship between knowledge and death: “The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him.” That’s a question that, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, had its origins in the Garden of Eden. And it’s one of the big questions that Jack has to wrestle with as he considers what the consequences of his actions will be for himself and for those around him, and how much personal responsibility he will bear for those consequences.
All the King’s Men is a book that warrants multiple readings. I have only scratched the surface of it here. For one thing, I haven’t done justice at all to the Willie Stark character. But suffice it to say, this book easily gets a five-star rating from me, and I highly recommend it.
It is, first of all, beautifully written, with language that often approaches poetry—not surprising given that Robert Penn Warren won major literary awards for poetry as well as fiction, and shortly before the publication of this book was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1944–1945). Second, the story told in the novel, which is centered around two very different characters, Jack Burden and Willie Stark, whose lives intertwine, is compelling and complex, with a non-linear timeline that at first seems confusing but ultimately works to enhance the reader’s understanding of the connections between the characters and events. Third, through the narrator, Jack Burden, Warren explores many existential questions about truth, history, responsibility, guilt, good and evil, and more.
The novel is often characterized as a fictional political biography of the Huey Long-inspired character Willie Stark. But while Stark’s political career is one focus of the book, I think Jack Burden is the main character. As the narrator, I guess he has the inside edge on capturing the reader’s attention. But I found his journey in the course of the book to be fascinating, even though in many respects he is not all that likable.
As a young man, Jack has no purpose and no direction; he is drifting through life with no real idea of what he wants to do. All he really knows is that he wants to distance himself from his past—from the father who abandoned him when he was six years old, from the mother who he thinks never really loved him, and from the genteel surroundings of the community in Burden’s Landing (named for his family) in which he grew up. In college, Jack is drawn to idealist philosophy: “If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn’t real anyway.” This philosophy is, of course, convenient for a young man without direction.
After attending and hating law school, Jack studies history in graduate school but leaves before completing his dissertation. He then becomes a newspaper reporter and soon meets nascent backwoods politician Willie Stark. Jack admires Willie as a man of action, energy, and drive, and ultimately becomes his right-hand man and sometime fixer. Jack’s idealist philosophy serves him well in this role, but he feels conflicted by certain tasks that Willie asks him to perform, especially when he is asked to dig up dirt that has the potential to injure people he cares about.
But as a trained historian and a journalist, Jack is also drawn to knowledge and truth. So even though one part of him doesn’t want to dig up the dirt and he suspects he won’t like it if he’s successful, he can’t resist. “I knew that I had to know the truth. For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge to blackness. For there is a blackness of truth, too.”
Ultimately, learning the truth unlocks some secrets of Jack’s past and allows him to come to terms with the things he had been running away from. Jack is able to change his perspective about several important people in his past and begin to build a future. Other characters are not so fortunate. Willie Stark becomes a victim of his ambition, and Jack’s boyhood friend Adam Stanton, who also learns the truth, can’t handle it. As Jack tells Adam’s sister (and Jack’s future wife), Anne, Adam “‘is a romantic, and he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn’t conform in any respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away. Even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath. Which,’ I added, ‘it always does mean.’”
Early in the book, in a fine bit of foreshadowing, Warren has Jack ruminate about the relationship between knowledge and death: “The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him.” That’s a question that, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, had its origins in the Garden of Eden. And it’s one of the big questions that Jack has to wrestle with as he considers what the consequences of his actions will be for himself and for those around him, and how much personal responsibility he will bear for those consequences.
All the King’s Men is a book that warrants multiple readings. I have only scratched the surface of it here. For one thing, I haven’t done justice at all to the Willie Stark character. But suffice it to say, this book easily gets a five-star rating from me, and I highly recommend it.
