“All The King’s Men”
“All the King’s Men” written by Robert Penn Warren is more than just a classic political novel. Warren’s tale of power and corruption in the Depression-era South is a sustained meditation on the unforeseen consequences of every human action, the vexing connectedness of all people and the possibility that there might be some sort of good in a sinful world.
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. 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.
When it comes to politics, you can clearly see it throughout the whole book. For Warren, that’s simply the arena most likely to prove that man is a fallen creature. Which it seems to do well in this story.