TWO masterpieces!!
This review is about the audio version.
I read the hard copy of the book years ago, and I've always remembered it being one of the ten best books I've ever read. Of course, over the years only the basic story remained in my mind as the details faded. So I eagerly began listening to the audio version and quickly rediscovered the beauty of Warren's writing along with his interesting -- and sometimes fascinating -- sub plots. But what made this experience special was Michael Emerson's superb narration. With his multiple voices and his perfect interpretation of the drama, the book comes to life and is an even more exceptional story than I'd remembered.
If only Emerson and Kristoffer Tabori could narrate EVERY book I want to listen to!
A Beautiful Book that will stay with me Forever
This book sat on my shelf for a couple months before I even opened it. Originally getting it because it was a bargain book on Amazon, I initially didn't think much of it. I attempted reading it twice and wasn't quite ready for it. It took an English professor in college who recommended I read it to get past the first twenty pages. What I first found to be boring pretty language transformed into something transcendent. After completing the novel I found that Robert Penn Warren was the only person in history to receive a Pulitzer in poetry and prose. "All the Kings Men" clearly illustrates Warren's poetic language and imagery. My first mistake with this book was to dismiss it as a "political" novel. While politics is involved and part of the story is set around southern politics, it in no way encompasses the novel. Instead this is novel about life. The story is both alien and deeply personal for the reader. The narrator walks you through his life and introduces you to the people around him. Willie Stark, while an impressive figure in American Literature is more like a supporting character throughout the novel. Instead it's a novel that focus' on the narrator's trials and tribulations. Everything from love, and loss, to past and present and how these things shape our lives. It is perhaps my favorite novel in American Literature. If at first you seem daunted, stop reading and come back to it. A novel that sticks with you, that is Highly Recommended!
Our universal confrontation with the impossibility of integrity.
All works of art are only as strong as their underlying structure. In this book the organizing theme is perhaps the most daunting question any of us will ever face: The book is built upon an examination of our universal confrontation with the impossibility of integrity, or moral wholeness, and whether our life remains worth living afterwards.
One character finds it is not. One becomes mad from her unknowing. One believes it doesn't matter, yet dies at the hand of another for whom nothing else matters, and who in turn dies for his belief.
The protagonist and narrator, Jack Burden, is surely one of the most cynical of men, but his 650 page journey through darkness, false enlightenment, and eventually toward a dubious and paradoxical redemption, wet my face many times. Where does this effect come from? Not from the plotting (which is flawless, of course), or the magnificent and dazzling array of characters, and their epic tortures, or the stupefying command of literary craft, technique, and method the author displays, but from the sustained poetic narrative itself, every single word of which is perfectly calibrated to unlock one's deepest feelings, and to change one forever.
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