Saralee Says
All The King's Men (Harvest Books) by Robert Penn Warren is often described as the thinly disguised account of the rise and fall of Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. Both Long and Warren's character, Willie Stark, came from humble beginnings, had the best of intentions and were killed at their height of power.
I have always been more fascinated by the character of Jack Burden than that of Stark. Burden is the behind-the-scenes person for Gov. Stark. He knows where all of the bodies are buried and is supposed to be highly educated, yet he carries out duties that are morally wrong in order to help Stark gain more power. What makes people like Burden tick? No one, in my opinion, does a better job of explaining who wants power and what people will do to help their friends stay in power than Warren does in All The King's Men. In today's world of polarized politics between the conservatives and liberals, it is definitely a book worth rereading.
What politicians do you know today that remind you of Stark? Why? More importantly, who are Tennessee's versions of Burden? Do you respect the operatives who do the bidding for politicians today? Why or why not? Who is the more powerful in Warren's novel, Stark or Burden? Did the character of each change much after Stark was elected governor?
What about the women in All The King's Men? Lucy Stark was a schoolteacher who stayed married to her husband even while he had two mistresses. Why? Does her character remind you of Eleanor Roosevelt or Sen. Hillary Clinton? Sadie Burke was not only one of Stark's women, she was also his secretary. Do you condemn or condone her actions throughout the book? What about Anne Stanton? Is she a victim or the ultimate manipulator? And don't forget Jack's mother and Miss Littlepaugh, since they also had important roles.
Do you like the method that Warren uses to tell the story? He goes back and forth in time and even adds a story of more than a century ago about the Mastern family. Does this help or distract from the plot in this novel?
Do you think All The King's Men is as great a novel as The Sound and the Fury (Vintage) by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (Scribner), Invisible Man (Vintage) by Ralph Ellison or The Great Gatsby (Scribner) by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Warren has Nashville ties. He grew up in Guthrie, Ky.; graduated from high school in Clarksville, and graduated from Vanderbilt where he worked with the Fugitives. If you want to know more about Warren, I highly recommend that you read Robert Penn Warren: A Biography (Random House) by Joseph Blotner.
Larry's Language
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is justly viewed as one of the great American novels. Why? Because this story of a grasp for power and the search for truth in an unnamed southern state shows how and why decency, religion, politics, race, sex, family history and class warfare all influence, shape and determine individual lives in different ways.
This novel is about the life and career of a Southern governor, Willie Stark, who comes to power as an idealist and remains in power by his willingness to crush and humiliate his opponents. This novel is also about the life and family of the narrator Jack Burden and how his research of Stark's opponents for the purpose of blackmail changes Burden's life and feelings.
This book succeeds on several levels. It is a fascinating account of the rise of a political star and how Stark changed his beliefs, goals and friends to maintain his power. It is also a troubling story of how Burden discovers his own past and the truth about his family, which subsequently helps Burden resolve the torment and conflicts in his own life.
The themes in All The King's Men ring true - Burden's theory of the Great Twitch versus Stark's belief in original sin and the influence of the past on our present versus the common greed and corruption that motivates many of the players around Stark and Burden. The Great Twitch idea is explained by Burden as a mysterious itch in the blood that controls human conduct. In other words, there is no logic as to why humans act in good or bad ways and therefore no one is morally responsible for their actions.
On another level, you can read this novel simply as an exposé or tell-all version of how and why politics really works. Candidates engage in "oppo research" which means they dig out the dirt on their opponents and use it to achieve their own narrow victories just like Stark had Burden do to Judge Montague Irwin.
It is often assumed that author Warren based this book on Louisiana Gov. Huey Long because Warren taught at Louisiana State University in the 1930s and some of the political themes and issues reflect Gov. Long's record. In fact, a good question for our book club is whether Gov. Stark - with his political shifts, impeachment, great energy and vision - could just as easily be compared to Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
Join us for our next book club discussion featuring Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell.
