All the King's Men is topically very similar to Primary Colors. Both are narrated by a confidant to a powerful, charismatic, Southern populist politician. Each narrator discovers that the man he works for believes in ideals, but at the same time, is willing to use crooked means to accomplish just ends, and believes himself exempt from the strictures that govern other men.

However, unlike Primary Colors, All the King's Men is not really about politics, and the politician whose career narrator Jack Burden discusses is less important than the narrator himself. Perhaps a theme closer to its heart is the interaction between the past and the present and future through the counterpoised conduits of truth and falsehood. But Warren is a poet (I read his poetry before I knew he wrote prose), and what ultimately makes this an excellent novel is its poetic ability to connect with something deeper and more universally than such a theme. To put it more simply, I cared what Jack Burden had to say.

And then there's the poetry disguised as prose. Warren is sometimes purple, and often reiterates word-for-word a description which loses its power in repetition. But there are also passages like this one (page 9):

"... the clammy, sad 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, and be warm in its not-knowing. 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. There's the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know."

Or this (page 17):

"Not that I much blame Duffy. Duffy was face to face with the margin of mystery where all our calculations collapse, where the stream of time dwindles into the sands of eternity, where the formula fails in the test tube, where chaos and old night hold sway and we hear the laughter in the ether dream. But he didn't know he ways, and so he said, 'Yeah.'"

The pacing and poetry start to lag at the end. Nonetheless, the novel as a whole is well worth reading. ( )

A wonderful character story. Is Willie Stark a power hungry despot who uses his oration to deceive others? Or does he actually care about the little guy? Do his ends justify his means? The psychological profile of Stark and Jack Burden, his gopher/journalist probe at human nature and question if anyone can and does live a moral or principled life. Based on the story of Louisiana governor Huey Long, this novel has been turned into two powerful movies as well. ( )

As Willie Stark, 1930s governor of a Southern state (Huey Long?) spirals downward from idealistic populist to powerful master of graft and corruption, the protagonist, Jack Burden, his chief aide, completing his own downward spiral, comes to terms with his family and himself. Well-written and compelling. Pulitzer Prize winner. ( )

It's been several years since I read this book, but I enjoyed it just as much the second and third times as I did the first. One of these days, I'll read it yet again. ( )