No, not this blog (although if someone wants to give me a trophy for my awesomeness, I will proudly accept it!). I'm talking about the book I just read, All the King's Men. I saw it at the library and realized it was one of those books I had always had in the back of my head but had never picked up (like most of the list of Pulitzer winners, for that matter...more on that later). And I'm very, very glad that I did.
From the minute I read the opening pages, Penn transported me back to Dust Bowl Louisiana, driving in a big, oversized Cadillac with The Boss, Willie Stark. Driving past dirt farms on a brand new road, built with Willie Stark's strongarm tactics, sweat beading on the back of your neck as you wipe it away with a kerchief, light an unfiltered cigarette with a Zippo lighter, the butane lingering on your fingers. Governor Willie Stark talking in a slow, syrupy, southern drawl in the front seat, poor Louisiana Depression-era farmers slowly watching on the side of the road...
Fast forward several chapters to descriptions of the South's rich and elite. You can see Anne Stanton's tennis skirt flowing as she casually plays the ball back and forth with her brother Adam, the future doctor, or Jack Burden, who will always be in love with her. You can hear the wind pushing the magnolia trees around, feel the humidity of the summer in the south surround you as they sit holding hands, each wishing they were gutsy enough to do more than just hold hands.
And of course, there's politics. In the south, there's always politics. The Boss admits that people have their hands in his pockets, but it's ok because he's got his hands in theirs. And yeah, people may be taking graft and be corrupt, but it wasn't anything Willie couldn't handle, and, at least in the book, he's probably right.
What struck me, though, was comparing it to today's climate. Business was mad at Willie because he increased the lease rates for coal fields, he increased taxes to pay for health care, he held businesses and contractors to standards to make sure buildings were safe to walk in. And 80 years later, business is making the same arguments (don't tax the job creators, don't regulate us, the unions are killing us). And there's no one like The Boss coming to stand up to them, unfortunately for us.
My favorite section was the trip west after Burden found out about Anne. I moved to Denver in the mid-90s and remember my friend Nick and I having conversations about 'The West.' Robert Penn Warner summed that time up better than I ever could have:
"For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the side of the empire. It is where you go when you hear that that's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go."
Nick and I spent hours talking about 'the west' and Penn summed it up for us in one paragraph.
Regarding Pulitzer winners, I'm considering reading all of them in order, beginning with "His Family" by Earnest Poole (1918) and ending up with "Tinkers" by Paul Harding (2010). I don't think I'd do it in one stretch, though...I'm sure I'd need something mindless like Stephen King to break things up. I'll keep y'all posted.
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