All the King's Men, review

Well hello there blog. Fancy meeting you here. I've recently started running, something I despise. Yet, i am forcing myself to do it three times a week. It's about time I started doing that with this blog, something I do not despise. So I figured I'd get back with a quick review of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men.

As I have blubbered before, the prose was gorgeous. I have only rarely come across such simply beautiful writing as this. But, the story should not be overshadowed. What sets out to ostensibly be the story of the politician Willie Talos becomes the story of his man Jack Burden. What a character Burden becomes. For the majority of the book, I thought he was the most despicable protagonist I had ever found myself reading about. Yet in the end, when we find that he tried to give the Judge a way out, I found myself feeling sympathetic for Jack. Finally, he was a character with whom I could empathize!

The assassination of Willie took me by surprise, but it retrospect, it shouldn't have. Talos was a man far too ambitious, one who seemed from the beginning doomed to fall back to the earth, brought down not by the sun but rather by his own hubris. Despite the hubris, however, Talos became something more than just a slime ball. Certainly, Talos embodied everything that is deplorable about politics: mud slinging, blackmail, cronyism, etc.

But he had ambitions for the greater good. Ambitions that were surprisingly relevant even today: better roads, better use of money in an economic depression, and free health care for all residents. He used his sleeze towards the greater good, but it was destined to come back for him. The paralyzing of his son was really the fatal blow to Talos, and the gunshots of Adam Stanton were merely Willie's death made real.

Warren's slow change of characters through the book made for excellent reading. Nothing seemed to be in stasis, and constantly evolving characters helps any book be good. I can safely recommend this book to anyone really. It strikes me, as cliched as this sounds, as the nearest I've ever come to the "great American novel." Is it the best American novel? Certainly not. But it encompasses so much of what has made the United States the nation that it is: backwater dealings of seemingly little import that shape the states and country as a whole.

All the Kings Men, the first 100 Pages

So Warren is still writing some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read. Take for instance this phrase from a meeting in which time moved inexorably:

...the clock in the corner, a big grandfather's clock, offered us the slow, small, individual pellets of time.

Yet in addition to the continued splendor of Warren's writing, we're getting plot development. I've yet to see the recently-made movie based on the book, but it's easy to understand how the inspiration came about. It's a classic story told from the present in the vein of Forrest Gump. The first chapter (72 pages) outlines the "now" of the story. Willie Talos, governor, is in the middle of a fight to nominate a senator. One of his long-time backers has switched sides, and Talos takes the narrator, Jack Burden, to convince the Judge to come back, or else. It's really the dirty side of politics. After the encounter, Jack says that eventually everything "The Boss" (Talos) wanted was accomplished. He found the dirt on the Judge, the only father-figure he ever had. But before we get to that (assuming we eventually do), he takes us back to the beginning of Talos' career.

But the most intriguing part of it all is how Jack manages to make both himself and The Boss into imminently loathsome characters. Generally, one does not come across such odious protagonists, and yet ten pages into the second chapter and I've forgotten (or at least pushed to the back of my mind) the reprehensible actions of the two in chapter one.

What I am still trying to figure out is whether these characters are easy to forgive because back-stabbing is such an ingrained part of American politics, or if it's because of the way that Warren writes. Nevertheless, the story is becoming fascinating, and the writing remains superb. I'll keep updating as I keep reading. If you've read the book, let me hear your say in the comments!