Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201260252
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT RIVENBARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NEW EDITION OF `ALL THE KING'S MEN'
ALL THE KING'S MEN. By Robert Penn Warren. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $15.95.\ Republishing an American classic like "All the King's Men" is a good idea. It reminds us what a rich literary heritage we possess.
Warren's masterpiece, originally published in 1946, works on many levels, like a medieval allegory. At the same time it unfolds as a realistic tale of political corruption based on the life of Louisiana demagogue Huey Long.
Long, called Willie Stark in the novel, starts as a naive but driven country boy. After early failure, he moves by ruthlessness and cunning through the political machinery of his state to a berth in the governor's mansion. He maintains his position by blackmail and playing political factions against one another. At the same time he drags his state up from poverty and ignorance, builds roads and schools, enacts a public health bill and erects a free hospital, saying, "you have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of."
The book also chronicles the spiritual voyage of narrator Jack Burden, a newspaperman who works as Willie's secretary. Disillusioned early in life by the weakness of his wealthy father, Burden sees in Willie a clarity of purpose, a masculine forcefulness that he himself lacks.
Through its poetic beauty, narrative drive and insights both spiritual and psychological, Warren's novel becomes a universal myth about the corrupting effects of power. Occasionally the poet in Warren leads him into long digressions, and the story drags, but the poetry is so good you can usually forgive him his excesses. The impact of the book as a whole is overwhelming. This is a genuinely great novel, destined to be read for generations to come.
\ Robert Rivenbark is a Blacksburg-based free-lance writer.