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.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 1,315 words. This
study guide contains 34,580 words (approx. 115 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our All the King's Men Access Pass.
