Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for best American novel in 1947, the final year of the award (which was replaced with the award for best American fiction), ALL THE KING’S MEN is considered an American classic and the go-to Allstar of American political fiction.
Peripherally, ALL THE KING’S MEN tells the story of the charismatic and morally-questionable Governor of Louisiana and US Senator, Huey Long “The Kingfish”. His dramatic rise and sudden demise were familiar to readers in the 1940’s but by now most have forgotten (or never heard of) Governor Long. This book doesn’t detail much about The Boss’s policies or controversies, so I thought potential readers may be interested in a bit of backstory: Huey Long was a socialist populist, promoting the role of government in helping the poor through redistribution and public works. He was reviled by old-guard politicians of both political parties, the blue-blooded elites, and the corporate interests he wanted to tax (mainly oil companies). He managed to make plenty of enemies during his politicking, employed pay-for-play politics, and was accused of dictator-like abuses of power in Louisiana. During his time in the US Senate, Long was described as “the hillbilly hero … [who] wore silks suits and pink ties, womanized openly, swilled whiskey in the finest bars, swaggered his way around Washington, and breathed defiance into the teeth of his critics” (Historian David Kennedy). Long was a critic of the New Deal, claiming it didn’t go far enough in redistributing power and wealth from Wall Street (Long’s favorite bogeyman) to the poor. President Roosevelt considered Long a major threat, accusing him of election fraud, voter intimidation, and tax evasion. This drama was coming to a head when Long was assassinated.
However, while the story in ALL THE KING’S MEN revolves around the political career of Willie Stark (Huey Long), the book is not really about him at all, but about the personal growth and awakening of his right-hand-man, Jack Burden. Indeed, the entire book is spent inside the head of Jack Burden as he searches for The-Point-Of-It-All while working as the get-it-done man for The Boss. As you read this book you’ll discover that Jack Burden’s head is an interesting and somewhat neurotic place. He has a generally perverse, almost morbid view of the world. He notices and remembers things like how a person’s skin covers their skull and tends to see the most compromising past and darkest potential in everyone. He is also passively arrogant, almost psychotically unempathetic, and basically jaded by the human experience. Still, his psychological journey is convincing and somehow inspiring, and there is no shortage of profound philosophy here, even if it tends to be on the more pessimistic side of the spectrum.
If that sounds less than pleasant, don’t worry, because Robert Penn Warren’s lyrical prose is absolutely masterful, being breathtakingly beautiful and often hilariously witty, making ALL THE KING’S MEN an enjoyable page-turner that you can read for no other reason than experiencing how the words are put together. A less-skilled wordsmith trying to tell the same story is the same manner would have failed epically, but this book is confusingly excellent and a must-read.
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Popular Highlights in this book
For God and Nothing have a lot in common. You look either one of Them straight in the eye for a second and the immediate effect on the human constitution is the same.Highlighted by 674 Kindle readers- I tried to tell her how if you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and how if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.Highlighted by 653 Kindle readers
- But they had something else in common: they had in common the knowledge that they did not have what they had. They did not have Willie Stark, who was what they had.Highlighted by 532 Kindle readers
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Five Stars
Loved the style, language, characters, and plot! Great novel, have wanted to read it for years.
Top reviews from other countries
M Clark
This is classic novel about US politics in depression era Louisiana
Reviewed in Germany on March 15, 2021