All the King's Men (Penguin Modern Classics)

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But somewhere along the way he forgot the need to cajole and explain and persuade, as his growing power enabled him to achieve his ends quicker through bullying and force. Pages: 464 The first edition of this classic Robert Penn Warren book was published by Harcourt Brace and Company in 1946.

We see him appoint a crusading attorney general who wages legal battles against the big interest groups that had previously owned the state legislature. Many would rank Long as one of the most corrupt, but honestly, some would tell you he did a great deal of good for the state and might have done the same for the country had he ever been elected president. Another interesting aspect of Warren’s novel, and something that mirrors our society, is how The Boss’ populism polarises and divides his state. Long and the fiction Willie Stark, may be indicated by the fact that in the verse play [ Proud Flesh] the name of the politician was Talos – the name of the brutal, blank-eyed 'iron groom' of Spenser's Fairie Queene, the pitiless servant of the knight of justice.

This is very heavy-handed indeed, especially when Willie’s name is contrasted to that of the narrator: Jack Burden — the “burden” here being the burden of the past, and indeed Jack is sadly burdened by his. All the King’s Men is a brilliant novel that allies Stark’s rise and fall and Jack’s private life as he finally finds some peace. I liked the way he managed to avoid politics and stick to the political system – can’t be bothered with books that have too strong a political message.

Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success. It is in that sense that the characters are "all the king's men", a line taken from the poem Humpty Dumpty (Warren biographer Joseph Blotner also notes, "Like Humpty Dumpty, each of the major characters has experienced a fall of some kind"). Judge Irwin is an elderly gentleman whom Jack has known since childhood, a man who is essentially a father-figure to him.Warren universalises his narrative through his narrator, suggesting that all conscious citizens in unstable liberal democracies are Jack Burden. We begin to see Jack as a thinking man, philosophical, cynical and rather defeated – why has he ended up as Stark’s minion? I’m just drafting my Blogging Highlights post for posting on 1 January, and one of the things I noted is that I wrote significantly fewer posts this year, so yes, I too had trouble staying afloat too.