All The King's Men
All The King's Men, based on the political life of Huey Long when he was governor of Louisiana in the early 1900s, is similar to Primary Colors, a novel based on Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992. Both books expose campaign corruption, dishonesty in office, and damaging sex scandals, all of which still plague the American political arena.
But Willie Stark, the man in All The King's Men who becomes Governor of Louisiana, is not the protagonist of the novel. The story is narrated by Jack Burdon, a young newspaper man whom the Governor makes his assistant. He is well-acquainted with the farm boy who becomes governor and promises to fight for the many poor people in his state. Jack also grew up with Anne and Adam, children of the late Governor Stanton. And much of his childhood was spent at the home of Judge Irwin, who turns out to be his real father at the end of the story.
One of the Governor's first assignments for Jack is to dig up any facts about the Judge's past that can be used to compel his support. Jack later has to present this incriminating evidence to the Judge himself, which brings about the first death in the story.
The Judge's death indirectly benefits Governor Stark, but Willie's brief affair with Anne, whom Jack had once proposed to, does not. Anne's brother Adam, whom the Governor had chosen to head a new hospital, learns of the affair, and in a fit of rage assassinates the Governor. Moments later he too is killed.
Robert Penn Warren won many awards in his years of writing, and his development of the fictional characters representing Huey Long's political menagerie attests to it. All the main ones suffer death or tragedy, except Jack, the narrator. And he is too involved with the fate of the others to realize he is suffering, too.
The only weak part in Jack's character, other than his lengthy descriptions, is what appears to be his indifference to death. Towards the end, he jokingly persuades Sugar-boy, the Governor's young disabled bodyguard who shot the assassin, to kill whoever else was behind the assassination. The boy agrees to do it, but Jack, not sure he wants his joke to become a reality, finally backs off.
During his career in writing, Robert Penn Warren won the Bollinger Prize for Poetry, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1986 he became Poet Laureate of the United States.