All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (86 down 14 to go)

…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 bad and the bad out of good, and the devil take the hindmost. ~ Jack Burden

This is the first time I’ve read All the King’s Men or Robert Penn Warren. The book is a modernist novel with existential themes. It is the tale of Jack Burden and Willie Stark, because as Jack, the first-person narrator put it

...the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Before reading All the King’s Men, I didn’t know it won a Pulitzer or that the 1949 movie adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture. I’m glad I didn’t know, as that would have set expectations high. I much prefer to have no expectations.

Jack Burden is a history researcher and aide to Governor Willie Stark – the popular and powerful governor of an unnamed Southern State in the 1930s (unnamed but most likely Louisiana). Jack is a crafty cynic, and worldly wise Jack-of-all-Trades for the governor.

In a flashback, the two meet when Willie is a petty county bureaucrat. Willie attempts to expose a crooked construction deal for a new school, but the old political machine is untouchable, until an inferior fire escape at the school gives way during a fire drill and kills several students and cripples others.

According to Jack:

It was a piece of luck for Willie.

(cynic…I told you)

It launches Willie’s political career, and he runs for governor, or again as Jack put it…

he was running for Governor. Or rather, he was running in the Democratic primary, which in our state is the same us running for Governor.

In his initial campaign, Willie is naïve and politically inept. He is also initially a man of honesty and integrity, until he learns he is a stooge of the political machine, trying to split the support of another candidate.

Willie does not win that primary, but he does eventually become governor. He is wildly popular with the people, despised by political opponents, and feared by his stooges. His staff all call him Boss. Jack calls him boss, but is no stooge. Jack’s job included many things, such as digging up dirt on people that needed persuading.

Jack had other, less sordid, duties. He said: 

I was supposed to do a lot of different things, and one of them was to lift up fifteen-year-old, hundred-and-thirty-five-pound hairy white dogs on summer afternoons and paint an expression of unutterable bliss upon their faithful features as they gaze deep, deep into the Boss’s eyes.[photo-op at the old family farm]

The tale is about Willie’s growing political savviness – and slow corruption, and simultaneously about Jack’s philosophizing of the entire saga. I couldn’t and wouldn’t attempt to recapitulate Jack’s philosophy. The quotation at the top of this post is one example, and here are a couple more:

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him. There’s the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know.

And…

If the human race didn’t remember anything it would be perfectly happy. I was a student of history once in a university and if I learned anything from studying history that was what I learned. Or to be more exact, that was what I thought I had learned.

As Jack implies, there are definite parallels between his story and Willie’s. Both are pragmatic and have no qualms with the seedier aspects of politics. Jack is able to justify his role because as a historical researcher – he loved truth. If it was the truth he dug up – so be it. The Boss did the dirty work with it. And even the Boss’ dirty work – well, they told themselves they were doing it for the greater good.

Several distinct but related violent events shake both Willie and Jack to the core of their beliefs. It comes too late for one, and perhaps just in time for the other.

I really enjoyed this novel. First, for the philosophical dilemmas, or moral ambiguity, or conflicted consciences, or situational ethics, or well you see – the complex business of life.

But secondly, Robert Penn Warren uses fabulous dialogue and narrative that is simply a lot of fun and entirely believable for his characters (examples in the excerpts at the end). Jack in particular likes to string together a half-dozen or more adverbs or adjectives in describing people and events.

There are several great tragedies in this novel – more than several, but in spite of them, there is a very satisfying ending.

Once more, in Jack’s words: 

This has been the story of Willie Stark, but it is my story too. For I have a story. It is the story of a man who lived in the world and to him the world looked one way for a long time and then it looked another and very different way.

Have you read All the King’s Men? What did you think?

Excerpts:

There’s a reference to Moby Dick as Jack describes the alluring look a love interest gives him. [she]

…sunk her harpoon deeper than ever Queequeg sunk it…

Then the boss spied a fellow, a tall gaunt-shanked, malarial, leather-faced side of jerked venison, wearing jean pants and a brace of mustaches hanging off the kind of face you see in photographs of General Forrest’s cavalrymen…

My god, you talk like Byram was human! He’s a thing! You don’t prosecute an adding machine if a spring goes bust and makes a mistake. You fix it. Well, I fixed Byram. I fixed him so his unborn great-grandchildren will wet their pants on this anniversary and not know why. Boy, it will be the shock in the genes. Hell, Byram is just something you use, and he’ll sure be useful from now on. ~ The Governor discussing how to deal with a corrupt bureaucrat

He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-filed pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

The second day I was in Texas. I was traveling through the part where the flat-footed, bilious frog-sticker-toting Baptist biscuit-eaters live. Then I was traveling through the part where the crook-legged, high-heeled, gun-wearing, spick-killing, callous-rumped sons of the range live and crowd the drugstore on Saturday night and then all go round the corner to see episode three of “Vengeance on Vinegar Creek,” starring Gene Autry as Borax Pete.

I had seen three hangings and one electrocution, but they are different. In a hanging you do not change a man’s personality. You just change the length of his neck and give him a quizzical expression, and in an electrocution you just cook some bouncing meat in a wholesale lot.

I tried to tell her how if you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and how if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.

Film Rendition:  There is a 2006 version but it didn’t receive great reviews so I passed. The 1949 version however won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), and Best Actress in Supporting Role (Mercedes McCambridge). It also received four other nominations. So, it should go without saying it’s very good.

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The King and I - NOVA this week

Observations from my weekly wanderings, usually in Northern Virginia (NOVA).

Yesterday my wife and I attended a performance of The King and I at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

In short, it was magnificent. Laura Michelle Kelly was beautiful and convincing as Anna (even if you have Deborah Kerr or Jodie Foster thoroughly pegged in that role), and the children were adorable and seemed to be having a good time. But for me, Jose Llana, as the King, was the most impressive. He was sort of a cross between Chow Yun Fat’s charm and Yul Brynner’s bombastic presence.

Besides the pure pleasure of the performance, The Kennedy Center is a glorious structure and a memorable experience.

And finally, it reminded me of two books I need to add TBR: Anna and the King of Siam, and The Small House of Uncle Thomas aka Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

I love Anna’s story. I’ve been to Thailand a few times – she changed the course of history in that nation. It’s always thrilling to review a portion of her story.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is a collection of 154 – you guessed it – sonnets. The first 126 are written to a young man, the final 28 to a woman.

In my opinion, a discussion of Shakespeare’s Sonnets should involve three topics: the poetry, the mysterious persons who are the subjects, and what the sonnets reveal about one of the greatest writers in history.

The Poetry: Although I write a little poetry myself, I am hardly qualified to comment. But nonetheless…

What is a sonnet? Typically it is a poem of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter, and consisting of 3 quatrains and one couplet. Believe it or not, I know what that means. Iambic just means legs (typically an unstressed syllable, followed by a  stressed syllable). Pentameter means a five part meter (per line). So, iambic pentameter is five legs (pairs) of syllables per line: da DA, da DA, da DA, da Da, da Da. A quatrain is four lines wherein the first and third lines, and the second and fourth lines rhyme. There are three such quatrains followed by a couplet: two lines, still in iambic pentameter that rhyme.

I’m going to risk embarrassing myself and attempt a spontaneous composition of a quatrain and couplet (not an entire sonnet) right now, just as I’m writing…here goes.

The Sun will e’er ride high to light my day

But I a fool too oft disdain the light
And take my days as simply come what may
To seek instead the comfort of the night
--but time it turns and teaches me my error
--too late for me but the let the wise beware

Doggerel really, but that’s a quatrain + couplet in iambic pentameter. A typical sonnet, would have two more quatrains. There are variations...but that's the traditional arrangement.

Which still says nothing of the quality of the poetry. Well, even though I gave only one and one-half stars to what is supposedly one of the greatest novels ever – I’m not about to say Shakespeare can’t write poetry. From a technical aspect alone the sonnets are impressive. Written in early modern English, they take a little work to understand and appreciate. I’d have been lost without help from SparkNotes. But after reading a couple dozen with the help, I could actually get most of what the Bard was saying without them. I still used the notes to ensure I got the full gist. Besides the technical competence, there is some lovely turn of phrase and some lovely sentiment, but also some rather disturbing, or at the very least confusing sentiment.

The subjects. Both the young man, and the mysterious dark woman are enigmas. There is much speculation of who they might have been, but no one knows for sure. There is also mystery over the dedication to Mr. WH; I suspect it is the young man of sonnets, but again, we don't know for certain.

What can we learn about William Shakespeare? Very little for certain, because there is further mystery. The first 126 sonnets are to a beautiful young man whom the poet loves and admires. Some believe this indicates Shakespeare was gay or bisexual, but that is far from conclusive. First, it is possible that Shakespeare was writing poetic fiction – not his sentiments at all, just a fictional narrator. Personally, I doubt this premise, but it is still possible. Secondly, the language is loving, adoring, admiring, but not usually sensual. It is possible that it was platonic love. Initially, I doubted this premise; the writer is just so over the top adoring of the young man, but when I got the last 28 sonnets that are definitely to a different person, and a woman, they are quite sensual, sexual, and bawdy. There was definite sexual attraction there, and if he chose to reveal it in the poems for this woman, why not earlier to the young man, unless it wasn’t sexual.

The final 28 sonnets do reveal something about Shakespeare. These express both sexual and emotional love for the subject – a dark mysterious woman, who was not particularly beautiful, but nonetheless adored by the narrator. In this case I believe it was Shakespeare’s own sentiment. He makes frequent wordplay with his own name Will. He identifies himself as Will, but also uses this as a bawdy phallic reference.  

But I’m straying from the real point. I don’t delve too deeply into the personal lives of the novelists I read. If I do, it has little bearing on whether I enjoy their writing.

So, Shakepeare’s poetry – Yeah it’s pretty good.