https://lpgventures.com/4ir9zuq You would think that a novel about political corruption by a populist politician who gets elected on the strength of wild promises but uses his office mainly for personal profit would be obsolete by now, nearly 80 years after its publication, because of course voters will have learned by now to recognize lies when they are blatantly false, but surprisingly Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men remains as relevant now as it was just 50 years ago when the story of corruption in the Oval Office was explored by Woodward and Bernstein in their allusively titled book (and movie) All the President’s Men.
https://www.brigantesenglishwalks.com/30htqesff All the King’s Men has been a classic of American literature almost from the moment of its publication in 1946. It received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, making Warren the only writer ever to receive a Pulitzer for fiction as well as poetry. And it continues to be respected, having been included on Time magazine’s 2005 list of the best 100 novels since 1923 and the Guardian’s best 100 novels of all time. It was ranked as number 36 on the Modern Library’s famous 1998 list of the greatest English language novels of the century as well as Radcliff Publishing’s rival list of the same year, where it came in as number 38. The Library Journal’s 1999 “Books of the Century” list ranked it as number 94. All the King’s Menwas included on The American Scholar’s 2014 list of “One Hundred Best American Novels, 1770 to 1985” and, most recently, in The Atlantic’s 2024 list of “The Great American Novels”—an unranked list of 136 books all chosen, according to the magazine “for their ability to challenge, delight, and leave readers more informed and engaged.” The novel’s most elevated ranking was in the Oxford American’s 2009 list of “The Best Southern Novels of All Time.” And it appears here, of course, as book number 92 (alphabetically) on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
https://purestpotential.com/hdvadr8 Warren began teaching at Louisiana State University in 1934 and could not possibly ignore the presence of the state’s most prominent citizen. Thus his charismatic politician Willie Stark was based on, or at least inspired by, depression-era Louisiana governor and later senator Huey P. Long. Long was assassinated by a physician in 1935 at the height of his power in the Louisiana state capitol building. Known as “kingfish,” Long’s slogan was “Every Man a King,” so the title of Warren’s novel is a not-too-subtle allusion to Long and his career. But it is important to note that, when people began to speculate as to whether the novel was intended as an apologia for Huey Long’s career, or, on the other hand, a condemnation of the man and a justification for the fate that befell him, Warren wrote that, first, “For better or worse, Willie Stark was not Huey Long. Willie was only himself.” And secondly, the novel “was never intended to be a book about politics. Politics merely provided the framework story in which the deeper concerns, whatever their final significance, might work themselves out.” So what were those “deeper concerns”? Let’s take a closer look.
Can You Order Tramadol Online It’s important to note that the novel is narrated by Jack Burden, a political reporter who first meets Willie Stark when the future governor is an honest local politician trying to get a new schoolhouse built in his county, his idealism fueled by a schoolteacher wife whom he dotes upon. Jack follows Willie’s subsequent gubernatorial campaign—a campaign he’s been tricked into making by one of the two major candidates, who believes that Stark will take votes that would otherwise go to his opponent. The trick works, the more corrupt candidate wins, and Willie goes down in flames. But he learns two important lessons. The first, learned partly through Jack’s advice, is that is that voters don’t respond to facts and numbers, but to rousing speeches that aim at their emotions. Jack tells him
https://dcinematools.com/51m2zhdv0c Just tell ’em you’re gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff…Willie, make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they’ll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven’s sakes, don’t try to improve their minds.
source The second, learned from his opponents, is that Machiavellian manipulative politics will beat honesty and rationality every time, especially if backed by money.
https://penielenv.com/d9f7a7fk8d0 Jack comes to work as Willie’s advisor and right-hand man, and the novel’s story is not only told by Jack Burden, it intertwines with Jack Burden’s life as events unfold in and around his continual philosophic musings. Willie, with a bias for action, builds highways and bridges and schools, and ultimately a great hospital where even the poorest people in his very poor state may receive free medical care. In doing so he engages in all forms of political corruption and builds a machine using bullying and intimidation of his political opponents, but he remains a populist hero to his blind supporters. All the while Jack serves as a kind of chorus in what is becoming Willie’s tragedy.
https://www.marineetstamp.com/pgcjsez0i Jack has always had a tendency to sit back and observe life. Born into an old-money home, Jack grew up to attend college. Fascinated by historical research, he decides to focus on a Civil-War era ancestor of his named Cass Mastern for a Ph.D. dissertation. Through Mastern’s letters and journals, Jack finds that this high-principled man made one grave error by betraying a friend, an error that wound up affecting many others. Jack, seeing that every action has unforeseen consequences, walks away from his dissertation an becomes a reporter—an occupation that, like his historical research, allows him to watch and examine things from the sideline, rather than risk anything through his actions.
see Back in his childhood home at Burden’s Landing, Jack had had two close friends, Adam and Anne Stanton, both children of the state’s former governor, a man who like himself had come from old wealth. (Jack is in love with Anne, but has given up the thought of winning her). In the same neighborhood was a friend of his parents (and of Governor Stanton), a father figure for Jack, named Judge Irwin. The Stantons, Irwin, and his mother all vilify Governor Stark, who comes from a backwoods “redneck” background and grew up poor and never attended college. They cannot understand how Jack can work for such a man, knowing the depths to which Willie has stooped to achieve his ends. But for Jack, things are not so cut and dried. The old “gentlemanly” way of doing things cannot stand up to politics as Willie Stark plays them, and Willie is able to do things his predecessors could not get done:
https://www.yolascafe.com/l5d2q0two what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
https://geolatinas.org/j4vl043 Working for Willie Stark, Jack cannot be an observer forever. When Judge Irwin refuses to support Willie’s candidate in an upcoming election, Willie orders Jack to dig into the Judge’s past and find something that can be used against him, to force him into falling in line with Willie’s plans. Jack does so, expecting to find nothing, but discovers a long forgotten transgression involving both the judge and Governor Stanton. Subsequently, he is further disappointed by Anne, who makes what he considers a disgraceful choice. For a time he abandons his job and his friends, and travels west to California, experiencing a kind of dark night of the soul, and embracing a new nihilistic philosophy. “All the words we speak meant nothing,” he declares, and “all life is but the dark heave of blood and the twitch of the nerve.” Human beings are determined by chance and biology he suggests. Our high moral ideals are just words, and our actions are futile. But when subsequent events surprise and shock him, and us (though I won’t throw any spoilers in here), he is shaken out of this dull, amoral view of the world, a view that may comfort him in the wake of his own betrayals and moral relativism. Ultimately it turns out actions have consequences, often unforeseen but that makes you no less culpable. The novel, it turn out, is the tragedy of Willie Stark, but also the tragedy of Jack Burden, who moves out of the “chorus” role and into that of the tragic protagonist by the end. In the closing lines of the novel, Jack asserts his own responsibility, saying “soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.”
https://www.mbtn.net/?p=xzwd5cjq All the King’s Men was adapted into a classic 1949 film that was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford played Willie Stark), and Best Supporting Actress (for Mercedes McCambridge, who played Willie’s adviser and mistress). That film did deviate significantly from Warren’s plot, leaving out much of the ending. A second film version directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Sean Penn as Willie came out in 2006, more faithfully following the novel’s plot. That film was not commercially, or critically, successful, however. So read the book before watching either film. You can make your own decision about the relative worth of the movie versions, but the novel will knock your socks off.
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