Review: ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren

I seem to recall not reading this book when it was on a summer reading list during high school. While missing a good story those 40 odd years ago, my procrastination was arguably to the good. Warren's compelling tale of power and corruption in the Depression-era South is more than just a great political story; it is a sustained meditation on the unforeseen consequences of every human act, the vexing connectedness of all people and the possibility—however slim—of goodness in a sinful world. I definitely related more strongly to these themes than I would have in my callow youth.

Willie Stark, Warren's lightly disguised version of Huey Long, the onetime Louisiana strongman/governor, begins as a genuine tribune of the people and ends as a murderous populist demagogue. The narrator, Jack Burden, is his press agent, who carries out the boss's orders, first without objection, then in the face of his own increasingly troubled conscience. And the politics? For Warren, that's simply the arena most likely to prove that man is a fallen creature. Which it does.