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All the King's Men Critical Essay #5
When All the King's Men appeared in 1946, most readers saw it as a political novel, and most of them were not overly concerned that the fictive testing of its philosophical assumptions resembled spiritual autobiography more than it did fiction by Upton Sinclair (who was still writing his Lanny Budd novels) of John Dos Passos. More serious readers, however, directed us properly and acutely to the moral import of the novel. So successful were they that most of us now tend to regard All the King's Men almost solely as a moral fiction. But its original reception was not wholly misinterpreted; the political base of the novel is firm. I have already suggested that for those readers who do not remember the Huey Long years, T. Harry Williams' definitive biography suggests the revealing parallels of Warren's novel and this historical moment as well as some equally revealing divergences. Despite Warren's...
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This section contains 1,315 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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