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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
For those that have given their reviews (at least the first two pages), I am not sure I read the same book you all read (or is it "y'all read"? ... and yes, RPW does say "you all" at least once in the book). The goodreads description, and most of the reviews say this is a political novel. Hunh? Yes, there is a politician, and it follows that politician and his sidekicks around, but I didn't really think that was the focus; it was only with that backdrop to which RPW presents the meat of the novel. I would certainly consider it a historical-fiction novel, but would also suggest it is a philosophical, and even a romance novel, before I would call it political. Even so, the first thing that strikes me is its unique and vivid literary prose dripping with a distinctly Southern quality. Two (of many) examples,
"The ground must have been swampy down there, for the grass and the weeds at the edge of the trees were lush and tropical green. Against the bare ground beyond it looked too green to be natural. I could see a couple of hogs lounging down there on their sides, like big gray blisters popped up put of the ground."
“The season was like a fine big-breasted daughter of some poor spavined share-cropper, a girl popping her calico but still having a waist, with pink cheeks and bright eyes and just a little perspiration at the edge of her tow hair (which would be platinum blond in some circles), but you see her and know before long she will be a bag of bone and gristle with a hag face like a rusted brush hook.”
I think these colloquial descriptions lend a true Southern flavor. The text wavers between paragraphs of this descriptive prose, plot advances, and philosophic ponderings; sometimes all three at once. The prose dances lyrical throughout, not just in the beginning chapter or two.
The philosophic questions are often political in nature, but don't have to be construed as such. The alluded-to moral dilemmas could pertain to, for example, personal career advances in a large corporation (often called 'office politics') or cutting-edge research, eg. genetic-engineered humans or stem-celled research... do you do the ends justify the means? Do you want the corporate advancement to be able to affect larger product decisions impacting the benefit of humanity? Do you tinkle with aborted humans fetuses to solve cancer? Do you sacrifice personal beliefs for the gain of humanity? It all comes at a cost... or as the novel says, a price of decision. The frame of reference in the novel is political, sure, but I think that is just one narrative.
I think some may criticize and rate the book low because of racial and gender issues. One must always consider two ideas before doing so: 1) when was it written? and 2) what time frame does it try to represent? Well, it is Jim Crow south (you will see words that most folks no longer use). And from everything I've read or heard about, this is how people talked, and how people were treated. The book doesn't espouse this as an ideology, but more as a matter-of-fact as to how it was in this time period. You should not fault the author for attempting to document the social norms (however abnormal as judged by the current societal norms) and language of a region in history. Imagine a literary review in 80 years from now judging current books: in a world in the year 2100, the Harry Potter's series is banned because Weasley family had more than one or two children and contributed to the overpopulation and competition for food, fresh water and jobs. Or banning the any book because it depicts gasoline-powered automobiles, which polluted the atmosphere.
Well, anyways, I liked the book. 4.5/5 stars bumped to 5 because I am sure I will be thinking about this for days.
"The ground must have been swampy down there, for the grass and the weeds at the edge of the trees were lush and tropical green. Against the bare ground beyond it looked too green to be natural. I could see a couple of hogs lounging down there on their sides, like big gray blisters popped up put of the ground."
“The season was like a fine big-breasted daughter of some poor spavined share-cropper, a girl popping her calico but still having a waist, with pink cheeks and bright eyes and just a little perspiration at the edge of her tow hair (which would be platinum blond in some circles), but you see her and know before long she will be a bag of bone and gristle with a hag face like a rusted brush hook.”
I think these colloquial descriptions lend a true Southern flavor. The text wavers between paragraphs of this descriptive prose, plot advances, and philosophic ponderings; sometimes all three at once. The prose dances lyrical throughout, not just in the beginning chapter or two.
The philosophic questions are often political in nature, but don't have to be construed as such. The alluded-to moral dilemmas could pertain to, for example, personal career advances in a large corporation (often called 'office politics') or cutting-edge research, eg. genetic-engineered humans or stem-celled research... do you do the ends justify the means? Do you want the corporate advancement to be able to affect larger product decisions impacting the benefit of humanity? Do you tinkle with aborted humans fetuses to solve cancer? Do you sacrifice personal beliefs for the gain of humanity? It all comes at a cost... or as the novel says, a price of decision. The frame of reference in the novel is political, sure, but I think that is just one narrative.
I think some may criticize and rate the book low because of racial and gender issues. One must always consider two ideas before doing so: 1) when was it written? and 2) what time frame does it try to represent? Well, it is Jim Crow south (you will see words that most folks no longer use). And from everything I've read or heard about, this is how people talked, and how people were treated. The book doesn't espouse this as an ideology, but more as a matter-of-fact as to how it was in this time period. You should not fault the author for attempting to document the social norms (however abnormal as judged by the current societal norms) and language of a region in history. Imagine a literary review in 80 years from now judging current books: in a world in the year 2100, the Harry Potter's series is banned because Weasley family had more than one or two children and contributed to the overpopulation and competition for food, fresh water and jobs. Or banning the any book because it depicts gasoline-powered automobiles, which polluted the atmosphere.
Well, anyways, I liked the book. 4.5/5 stars bumped to 5 because I am sure I will be thinking about this for days.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This has vaulted onto the list of my all-time favorite books.
Two favorite passages:
(1)
(2)
Two favorite passages:
(1)
Lots of nights I would go to bed early, too. Sometimes sleep gets to be a serious and complete thing. You stop going to sleep in order that you may be able to get up, but get up in order that you may be able to go back to sleep. You get so during the day you catch yourself suddenly standing still and waiting and listening. You are like a little boy at the railroad station, ready to go away on the train, which hasn’t come yet. You look way up the track, but can't see the little patch of black smoke yet. You fidget around, but all at once you stop in the middle of your fidgeting, and listen. You can’t hear it yet. Then you go and kneel down in your Sunday clothes in the cinders, for which your mother is going to snatch you bald-headed, and put your ear to the rail and listen for the first soundless rustle which wall come in the rail long before the little black patch begins to grow on the sky. You get so you listen for night, long before it comes over the horizon, and long, long before it comes charging and stewing and thundering to you like a big black locomotive and the black cars grind to a momentary stop and the porter with the black, shining face helps you up the steps, and says, ‘Tassuh, little boss, yassuh.'
You don’t dream in that kind of sleep, but you are aware of it every minute you are asleep, as though you were having a long dream of sleep itself, and in that sleep you were dreaming of sleep, sleeping and dreaming of sleep infinitely inward into the center.
That was the way it was for a while after I didn’t have any job. It wasn’t new. It had been like that before, twice before. I had even given a name to it— The Great Sleep. The time before I quit the University, just a few months before I was supposed to finish my dissertation for the Ph.D. in American History. It was almost finished, and they said it was O.K. The sheets of typed-on paper were stacked up on the table by the typewriter. The boxes of cards were there. I would get up late in the morning and see them there, the top sheet of paper beginning to curl up around the paper- weight. And I'd see them there when I came in after supper to go to bed. Finally, one morning I got up late and went out the door and didn’t come back and left them there. And the other time the Great Sleep had come was the time before I walked out of the apartment and Lois started to get the divorce.
But this time there wasn’t any American History and there wasn’t any Lois. But there was the Great Sleep.
(2)
They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren’t any other people there wouldn’t be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for then you aren’t you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you. There is only the flow of the motor under your foot spinning that frail thread of sound out of its metal gut like a spider, that filament, that nexus, which isn’t really there, between the you which you have just left in one place and the you which you will be when you get to the other place.
You ought to invite those two you’s to the same party, some time. Or you might have a family reunion for all the you’s with barbecue under the trees. It would be amusing to know what they would say to each other.
But meanwhile, there isn’t either one of them, and I am in the car in the rain at night.
Amazing novel about American Politics, sharp sarcasm and a great story with a roaring ending.
Warren is a brilliant writer and a fantastic storyteller, one of the best I've ever read.
The only problem for me was to understand fully the language, as it's full of (really amusing) Americanisms, joint to a style that privileges long periods and complex sentences with lots of subordinates, that a not native English speaker as me struggles to understand.
Warren is a brilliant writer and a fantastic storyteller, one of the best I've ever read.
The only problem for me was to understand fully the language, as it's full of (really amusing) Americanisms, joint to a style that privileges long periods and complex sentences with lots of subordinates, that a not native English speaker as me struggles to understand.
I actually liked this book a lot more than I expected. The opening chapter kind of put me off, but I pushed through, and I'm glad I did. The opening is a sort of Kerouac-ish, romanticized, stream-of-consciousness-ish, description of a road trip.
But once I was past that, the story really picked up. I started reading this while working in a theater that was doing the stage version. I'm glad I read the book to fill out the story.
The story of Willie Stark is, of course, the thinly disguised fictional version of Huey Long, the Louisiana politician who became governor and was assassinated in the state capitol. So the book is usually described as the story of Stark, a country boy who wanted to do good, but was corrupted by power, and who eventually was trapped by his own success.
The narrator in the book is Jack Burden, a journalist who eventually comes to work for Willie Stark. I thought Jack's story was the more interesting one here: he's a guy who kind of drifts along, doing whatever comes in front of him. Throughout the book, Jack tries to find meaning/connection in the random events of life. It's only after the death of someone important in his life, and the effects of that death, that Jack starts to find meaning and connection with other people.
I enjoyed it, partly for its setting in (fictional) Louisiana, and also for its own sake.
But once I was past that, the story really picked up. I started reading this while working in a theater that was doing the stage version. I'm glad I read the book to fill out the story.
The story of Willie Stark is, of course, the thinly disguised fictional version of Huey Long, the Louisiana politician who became governor and was assassinated in the state capitol. So the book is usually described as the story of Stark, a country boy who wanted to do good, but was corrupted by power, and who eventually was trapped by his own success.
The narrator in the book is Jack Burden, a journalist who eventually comes to work for Willie Stark. I thought Jack's story was the more interesting one here: he's a guy who kind of drifts along, doing whatever comes in front of him. Throughout the book, Jack tries to find meaning/connection in the random events of life. It's only after the death of someone important in his life, and the effects of that death, that Jack starts to find meaning and connection with other people.
I enjoyed it, partly for its setting in (fictional) Louisiana, and also for its own sake.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Not my usual kind of book, but so well written that I loved it anyways.
All the King’s Men turned out to be very well-done. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; it did win a Pulitzer, after all. I think I was sort of in the wrong mood for reading it because I felt very detached from the story, even though it was being told in a way I recognized as being one I would normally be very involved in. The main impression I carried away from the book was, “Ah, very skillful,” even though I knew I was meant to be moved by the drama, not focusing on the writer’s skill: I just didn’t feel moved, and it wasn’t through any fault of the author. Warren’s poetry is some of the most emotionally moving that I’ve read. I think I just need to go back and reread this in a few years, because I really did like it very much, and I think I would love it if I read it at the right time.
What a fantastic read! I enjoyed it immensely, a really good read which was difficult to put down, I found I really wanted to find out what happened next. I can't say I liked many of the characters with the possible exception of Jack, not that he was a particularly nice person after all he did blackmail a lot of people for "The Boss" Willie Stark! I loved his narration and his description of the scenes and events which happened through the novel.
A 3.5 rounded up to a 4.
I'll come back and do a full review if I feel like it.
I'll come back and do a full review if I feel like it.