All the King's Men (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

The one great good deed that he intends to atone for everything, a free hospital for the poor, becomes the occasion for some of the worst actions in the book: bribery, blackmail, and ultimately Stark’s own assassination.

It traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Or we’ll learn about Jack’s relationship with his four-times-married mother, still beautiful and rich, and Jack’s love for her, mingled with his resentment at all she stands for. Warren's novel serves as a poignant reflection on human integrity and the haunting question of individual responsibility in a corrupt society.

Yes, that sounds very like the Willie Stark in the book – he actually did things for the people unlike most politicians, although the ways he went about it were corrupt. It would benefit from more wheeling and dealing on [Stark’s] part, more scenes of gritty in-the-trenches governance. In achieving this office Stark comes to embrace various forms of corruption and builds an enormous political machine based on patronage and intimidation. It also introduces into the novel an explanation of the ways in which one person's actions affect other people and ripple outward from the center, touching both the present and the future.

I’ve struggled to keep up my own blog – and wrote fewer posts than I have for many years – but I just wanted to say hello (and to say that this is one of those books I’d love to read. Stark’s demagogic descent mirrors the story of the real Louisiana governor and then senator Huey Long, whose radical economic program and charismatic personality ensured his political domination until his assassination in 1935.Robert Penn Warren’s great novel is at once a political tragedy, a study of individual corruption, and a compelling southern drama with a long afterlife. had been doing anything for the folks in it, would Stark have been able to get out there with his bare hands and bust the boys’. He retreats from his life and from politics, reassessing his complicity in the tragic events that unfolded.

Stark, or “the Boss”, is shown becoming transformed from an idealistic lawyer into a powerful state governor, who quickly adopts all kinds of corruption to build a political machine rooted in graft and intimidation. PRAISE FOR "ALL THE KING'S MEN" "Over the course of more than two centuries of vivid political history, there is perhaps only one full-blooded American novel of politics that plunges deep into the hearts of its characters and therefore into the hearts of its readers, thus rising to the top ranks of American fiction. In his lifetime he won three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the National Medal for Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow. He sees his mother as a serial monogamist who married for the third time, and to a much younger man.The chapters are long, almost novella-length, and to a degree contain separate stories within the main story. All the King’s Men speaks to this time of turmoil, questioning how the individual responds to that, whether they challenge it or become corrupted by it.

You might like The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, which has a similar feel although the subject is totally different.

Unfortunately, however, All the King's Men simply has not received the attention it richly deserves.