All the King's Men by Robert Warren Penn
3 stars
Jack Burden starts off his “career” (I put career in quotes because he is the kind of person that seems to just never know what he wanted to do and just aimlessly drifted, until he found Willie) as a journalist who has a chance meeting with Stark as Stark was on his way up the political food chain. It is obvious he has some great ideas to shake up the state, and at that point in time he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. Jump ahead a bit later and Stark is running for governor only to find that he has been placed on the ticket by other greedy politicians only to split the vote. He’s been had. He’s a sap. Thus begins his meltdown…yet also his rise. Before he had been talking about all of his fantastic ideas to help the little people, the hicks, the rednecks, but for some reason he had not been able to speak to the common man in a way that they could understand. But now all bets were off. He would put all his cards on the table. Burden witnesses all this and the “Boss,” as they soon begin to call him, is born.
Throughout all of Willie’s rise, in which the timeline jumps around quite a bit, we hear the story of Jack’s life. His problems with his father that he does not like. His distant but loving mother. The girl that got away. His dissertation he never completed. This is what I mean when I say it’s really a story about Jack Burden. These tales make up about 90% of the book. And it’s a very long book (over 650 pages). For instance, the dissertation that he ended up just walking away from when it was nearly complete…Warren dedicated a whole chapter to this subject, (which I personally found irrelevant to the entire story) and, I want to say, it took up nearly 70 pages (maybe more).
The most interesting parts of the novel, by far, were those that included Stark. Especially when he was speaking. Warren had a brilliant gift for capturing dialogue. And he gave Stark a remarkable talent for being able to relate to the common folk. I could see how this corrupt politician won over the masses. But, as I said, this was unfortunately not the majority of the story, not even close. I started out the read entirely captivated, as the opening is a scene wherein the “Boss” pulls into a small town and gives an impromptu speech to a crowd of onlookers. But after the first 200 pages it lulled very quickly as it was clear this was the Jack Burden Story and not what I was hoping for. Thankfully the last 100 pages or so sped up again and were very entertaining, but it’s certainly a shame when you start a book thinking it could become a possible favorite and then it disappoints like this.
Sorry for my very extended blogging absence of two days (gasp!) but it could not be helped I assure you. I had a very long weekend of birthday celebrations and I simply had no time (or the proper brain capacity) to compose a thoughtful post.
But I’m back now!
I did finally get a chance to finish the book that has been taunting me for over a week however: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.
I’ve written a bit about this one already and I plan on writing a full review later this week but I just have to get a bit off my chest now. I’m irritated. It had a lot of potential and in the first 200 pages I really thought it could be a 5 star book. I was excited. But then in the middle it really started to drag and as a result I started reading slower and slower and the book ended up taking much longer than usual to finish. It wasn’t a bad book at all, I just think it could’ve been much better than it was.
It reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don’t know if you all remember my review or not but it was going along great when Wilde decided to insert a chapter that, in my opinion, was completely irrelevant to the story and slowed the reading pace to almost a complete halt.
Why do author’s do this? Someone told me that in Wilde’s case his publishers requested that he lengthen the book, but I don’t actually know if that was the case. But really to me it seems like the author is writing about one subject but wanted to get in something of a totally different subject in the SAME book. But it is as if they didn’t want to take the time to write a whole other book on that other subject so they just wanted to find somewhere in the book they were already writing and kind of insert it. The end result is annoyance (or at least it is for me!) and a much lower star rating come review time.
Has this happened to any of you? What book(s)?
Oh, and the most important question of all, did you miss me?
For some reason my interweb access lately once I get home to my abode has been nothing short of craptastic...so I've had to choose my posts wisely. Write what I can at work and then post whenever the internet cooperates at home. It's been a fun, lemme tell ya!
So I've been trying to become the best possible blogger I can be (you can do it!) by utilizing myself of all the various social networking tools available, but it's been a slow process. I am now on Goodreads but my shelf is not complete and I have yet to upload my reviews there. But I swear I'm doing it! You can find and friend me: HERE. But since I'm new to this whole blogging game I don't really know what other things I should avail myself of...I'm thinking of starting a Twitter account, although I kind of loathe the thought, haha. Maybe a Facebook page that corresponds solely to this blog...what else am I missing ya'll? Tell me in the comments!
And so this post isn't all me me me me (but who am I kidding, aren't they all?) I'd like to leave you with a highlight from the book I just started. It's All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren which won the Pulitzer Prize way back in 1947. I'm just over 50 pages in and while I have no idea where it's going exactly I must say the writing is FANTASTIC. I was captivated right away. You can just feel it if you get what I'm saying.
"You saw the eyes bulge suddenly like that, as though something had happened inside him, and there was that glitter. You knew something had happened inside him, and thought: It's coming. It was always that way. There was the bulge and the glitter, and there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a cold rubber glove."
Tomorrow I plan on posting my review of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. So be ready for that! See you soon :)
