To write only one novel, early in your career. And it’s a perfect book. Then just go on writing poetry for the rest of your life. Badass

48 stars out of 10. This just became a new favorite book. It’s been called the greatest American political novel ever written, and who am I to disagree?

But to say it’s political is to describe only one small aspect of it. Sure, one of the main characters happens to be a politician. But this is really a study of broken human nature, of our quest for truth, of how we cope in the midst of dysfunction, and how our imperfections affect the lives of others. And it’s written in the beautiful, colloquial, visceral way with words that only Robert Penn Warren has.

In so far as politics is the art of relationships, sure, this book is very political. But that’s barely scratching the surface.

Disappointing.

I had heard that this was an epic take on the rise of a nativist politician, a firebrand, a demagogue. Folks liken this tale to Huey Long or the latest fella who was good at giving a rip roaring stemwinder.

But that’s not the story.

The story is Jack Burden, the sallow psyche, the disproving jaundiced nature. Willie Stark’s political rise is charted through his downbeat gaze.

Warren’s Book, like a Faulkner work, is about the South, the milieu, the spittoons , the hyacinth, the Great sin, and the tired road to an undesired repentance.

And finally, the ending is sooo melodramatic, but again it’s the south.

Ένα κλασικό μυθιστόρημα πια της Αμερικανικής Λογοτεχνίας, που αναδεικνύει στον στυγνό αμοραλισμό των πολιτικών ( κάθε εποχής θα έλεγα ). Πέρα όμως από τον βασιλιά, τον κυβερνήτη Γουίλι Σταρκ και τον αγώνα του μέχρι τέλους για να επιβληθεί στους πάντες, εγώ εντυπωσιάστηκα περισσότερο από τον βοηθό του, τον Τζακ Μπέρντεν. Άνθρωπος καλλιεργημένος, που όμως "υπηρετεί" πιστά το αφεντικό του, τσαλαπατώντας πάνω σε κάθε τι που κάποτε ήταν δικό του. Μέχρι που ανακαλύπτει τη δική του αλήθεια και μέσα από τραγικές συγκυρίες επαναπροσδιορίζει τη ζωή του.
Ίσως να κουράζει λίγο η ανάγνωσή του, αλλά στο τέλος κλείνεις το βιβλίο με γλυκιά ευχαρίστηση.

I go through a lot of anxiety when I decide to quit a book in the middle of it. I really did give this one a chance. I really like the leader of my book club, who chose this book, however, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never read such a bunch of babble before in my life. If all the babble was pulled out of this book, it would probably be 100 pages. As opposed to it’s 437. This quote is an example… “If there weren’t any other people there wouldn’t be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for then you aren’t you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest.” Huh? Half the time I couldn’t tell where I was in this book. Is he talking about the present? The past? The future? Did this happen already? No idea. I just wish he would tell the story. The story of a mafia type politician. The Governor of a Southern state in the 1930’s. The narrator was something like the press secretary of “the boss”. But the author takes the reader off on so many tangents, I couldn’t keep anything straight, let alone have a clue about the actual plot. I was always asking the question, what does this have to do with the storyline? Will I find out later? The answer to that question is no because I’m closing the book on page 157.

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.

"There isn't ever anything to say to somebody who has found out the truth about himself, whether it is good or bad".

Before the above line there lie some 650 pages of small-print, which shows that RPW had plenty to say about politics, virtue and crime and the defects of each and love of course. This is a no-named southern state in 1939 and there is corruption, betrayal, ideals, regrets and far too many secrets. It is indeed over-plotted at points, for no apparent or at least persuasive reason, BUT it is superbly written.

Imagine you have a top-notch driver, a real virtuoso, who drives along wherever the road takes him. Whilst he does have a destination, he also has plenty of time, so he follows no specific route. The road takes him to sublime places, dark forests, seaside little towns and coves, but also to mundane landscapes and indifferent granite hills. At no time does our driver lack driving skill, neither does he ever stop looking and being filled with wander of what he sees. Like a journey, some places are beautiful others not so much, but just around the corner something new and wonderful catches you by surprise.

That's the book, our driver and this journey. The language and prose are alive and amazingly sharp; it reminded me at places of hard-boiled novels but also of sad poems. RPW was also an acclaimed poet and All the King's Men can also be viewed as a sad, truly sad story, told like a verse but looking like a novel.

It should be read much more outside of the US and should be in print in more languages. A long read, which could benefit from a more courageous editing, but easy-flowing and the end impression is rewarding.

On my short list of "best novels ever written." Robert Penn Warren was one of the great American writers and this one based on the Huey Long era in Louisiana politics is his best. A stunning book and well worthy of all the awards* it garnered when first published in 1946.

Many may remember the Robert Rossen film of 1949 which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and also the mediocre 2006 remake. If you saw the latter don't be put off. The book is a masterpiece and even more so if you are fascinated by American regional politics. Brilliant!

My treasured copy is a beautiful 1981 edition published with a sturdy slip case by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. With a 12-page introduction by Robert Penn Warren and delightful chapter headings and drawings by Warren Chappell.
*Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, 1947; the first of three, the other two for his poetry.

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

Ok......What did i think?? I wish I had read this book a loooooooooooongggggg time ago....... but maybe it was time to read it now. I think every American , whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, or I don't give a shit party, should read it..... It's a very modern topical novel to read now about how corruption can ruin a person,because we have to be right about everything........ instead of trying to work together for the better welfare of

"everyone" in this country.


It's a book that makes you realize not one way of thinking is correct. That being closed minded is the wrong path to take, that being a politician is not easy,and it's not necessarily rewarding,and it changes you into a person that maybe you don't really want to be. So many people say and act a certain way because they are afraid of what others think, but may act differently when left to their own devices..... to me that's what this novel points out.....at times the details were tedious, but then those details played a major role in the plot later.....as the plot thickened.


I came away from this novel relieved it was finally over, but then again sad to see it end. I see myself reading it again someday.

I also found myself laughing outloud quite often at the humor,and the way southern people act..... cause this is a southern story,but it's sentiments hit all of us......


That is why I consider this , up to this point in life, of what I have read thus far, the greatest American political novel that I've ever read.

Bravo, Robert! I wish you were still alive so I could attend your booksigning, and shake your hand....cause, dude....you rock!


Read it!

All the King’s Men is often promoted as a novel about politics, occasionally even the quintessential novel of American politics. While I did enjoy the portrait of Willie Stark as an archetype political boss, more interesting, to me, is the struggle of the narrator, Jack Burden, to overcome his nihilistic doubts in the face of a world governed by power. Jack claims to overcome his nihilism (“the Great Twitch”) by coming to an understanding of the morality of his own life (the personal and inter-personal) in relation to the ethical valuations of history (on the stage of the world).

So I read the larger narrative of the book in the light of Jack’s search for meaning, rather than seeing Jack as merely a narrator to the story of Willie Stark. From this perspective I think All the King’s Men tells a compelling story of Stark as a politician who, despite by all outward appearances of being driven merely by a quest for power, can in fact believe in the righteousness of his actions. He accomplishes this through an elaborate scheme of means-end reasoning and a vision of purpose that captivates or even short-circuits his own moral calculus. Willie Stark constructs a narrative of meaning through his campaign for a hospital that will serve all people, regardless of income, and is not mired in the exigencies of political reality that becomes for him a trump card in any consideration of the morality of his actions.

The ethically pious and occasionally self-righteous Doctor Adam Stanton serves as a foil to Stark, with their lives ultimately meeting in a tragic end as though destined by their inability to grasp the ethical possibilities of their world that the narrator, Jack Burden, eventually realizes. Adam’s attempt to live ethically through nonparticipation with evil and political power is sacrificed with the realization of his father’s ethical shortcomings; he then steps into the world of power by agreeing to oversee the construction of Willie Stark’s hospital (creating odd parallel between the two in that the hospital serves for both of them as the symbolic touchstone for an ethical life). Yet this critical step, away from a sanctified idealism into the practical world of compromise leads eventually to his tragic confrontation with Willie Stark. In the end, his defining action is not aimed at any practical end but is rather either an emotionally-driven strike against the objectification of his own (and his sister’s) moral compromise. The reader is left to ponder whether this outcome is this simply the natural result of his step away from a “kingdom of ends” in agreeing to join Stark’s hospital or a product of his inability to cope with the fallen nature of humanity.

That’s what I got out of it anyway. For a more critical view highlighting literary shortcomings and racial and gender issues, read “All the King’s Men—A Case of Misreading?” by Joyce Carol Oats in the New York Times Book Review.

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