All the king's men (1946)

"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 and into history and the awful responsibility of Time." ( )

I read this book in senior year in high school. While it focuses on Huey Long, the most important lesson, in my view, is learning responsibility. The protagonist was told, with regard to an opponent, to "get something on him and make it stick". He did and learned that he ruined another person for little or no reason. ( )

Corruption by inches, that’s how it works. Willie Stark sets out to do the right thing, to represent people who are under-represented, who don’t get what they need, to whom no one pays attention. But he finds that he must work in a system so bent that he has to wink or nod instead of stand firm and honest. Each time he succeeds, he slips a little further into himself until he has lost sight of his beginning.

Though Robert Penn Warren admitted that he was influenced by Louisiana’s Huey Long in writing [All the King’s Men], he also maintained that the story was a bigger story than about only one corrupt politician. The story is more about how corruption set in and takes hold, and it’s timeless.

Warren’s prose is mesmerizing, from the first page. As he describes driving down a humid, sun-blinding road in the first few paragraphs, he captivates you for the duration.

Bottom Line: A tale of corruption by inches.

5 bones!!!!! ( )

A fictionalized account of the idealistic country lawyer, Huey Long, who entered Louisiana politics at the invitation of invidious plutocrats who thought they could use him to split the "rube" vote. In Penn's novel, Willie Stark rises to power, as narrated by his close right arm Jack Burden. This is a lyrically written tragedy which takes on the big issues of life. ( )

Author Robert Penn Warren took pains in the preface to say that his character Willie Stark is not based (at least not solely) on Huey Long ... but with the basic story of Long that I know it's hard to believe. The book was published in 1946 (and awarded the Pulitzer in 1947) after having started as a play (never published) begun in 1937-38. It's set in the 1930's in Lousiana and, I think, does a good job of evoking the setting through the language it uses (which is cringe worthy to the modern ear). The main character is Jack Burden, aide to Governor Willie Stark. We share Jack's life from when he leaves the university just short of a Ph.D. in History until middle-age. We get a close-up view of Louisiana politics of the age through which we are made to reflect on the choices society always must make. Pragmatism vs. idealism, good vs. evil

Some of the descriptions in the book are lovely IMHO -- here's a sample
...a big pale apple-green moth, big as a bullbat and soft and silent as a dream--a Luna moth, the name is, and it is a wonderful name--came flying in. Somebody had left the screen door open, and the moth drifted in over the tables and chairs like a big palegreen, silky, live leaf, drifting and dancing along without any wind...
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I found the several main characters to be well drawn and compelling, the story interesting and well-paced and the book thought provoking. It's old but not dated. I highly recommend it. ( )