‘All the King’s Men,’ Now 70, Has a Touch of 2016.

[elleng]

'“Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly,” the journalist A. J. Liebling wrote. “They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the patch.”

Liebling was talking about Huey Pierce Long, Louisiana’s governor from 1928 to 1932. A fiery populist, a devotee of white linen suits and ruthless politics, Long was also that state’s senator from 1932 until he was assassinated in Baton Rouge in 1935, at 42.

Like some groceries, Long may have traveled poorly. Visiting New York City, he seemed like a rube to reporters. Yet in his afterlife, Long has traveled far and traveled quite well. He lingers in a corner of the national imagination, especially in this strange election year, like the shadow of a crow’s wing across a sunny day.

Long lives most expansively in Robert Penn Warren’s novel “All the King’s Men” (1946), an epic that turns a youthful 70 this year. The novel is based loosely on Long’s life and times, and by wide consensus, it’s America’s essential political novel — less funny but more sweeping than “Primary Colors” (1996), by Joe Klein, and less wonky but more sensitive than “Advise and Consent” (1959), by Alan Drury, to name two contenders.

I reread “All the King’s Men” recently, in the wake of the Ohio and Florida primaries. It remains a salty, living thing. There’s no need for literary or political pundits to bring in the defibrillators. It is also eerily prescient, in its portrait of the rise of a demagogue, about some of the dark uses to which language has been put in this year’s election.'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/books/all-the-kings-men-now70-has-a-touch-of-2016.html?

[Docreed2003]

1. Excellent Ellen....thanks for sharing!

I Love the book "All the Kings Men", and this analysis is spot on. As someone with family ties to LA and who's stood in the capitol building where Long was shot, just a point of clarification with the article. Long was likely killed by shots fired from one of his own body guards. Several folks have looked into this and it does seem that, in their haste to protect Huey, he was caught in the crossfire. Not to hijack a great thread, just wanted to point that out.

[elleng]

2. Thanks for 'new' historical facts, Docreed!

“Just stir ’em up, it doesn’t matter how or why, and they’ll love you and come back for more. Pinch ’em in the soft place. They aren’t alive, most of ’em, and haven’t been alive for 20 years. . .

“Look at your kids. Are they growing up ignorant as you and dirt because there isn’t any school for them?” He stirs class resentments; the crowds are mesmerized.

There was some Donald J. Trump in Long’s anti-establishment, outsider persona and his knack for free-range invective.'

[JustAnotherGen]

3. I own an old copy

Kind of dog eared. Thanks for this OP - maybe I need to read it again.