![]() ![]() Shrewd in his calculations about the human soul, and thus about politics, and surpassingly ambitious and ruthless, he becomes a master of the nasty politics that once sought to take advantage of him. At the next gubernatorial election, Willie wins. He turns on those using him, and rouses the people against them. Willie inadvertently learns he is being used. They certainly don’t care about Willie, whom one faction uses in a governor’s race to help defeat another faction, all the time telling Willie they care about Willie’s ideas to help the people. He discovers, however, that politics is a rough and nasty business, and that those directly involved don’t care about anything but themselves. Penn Warren’s novel tells the story of Willie Stark, an earnest young man from a poor rural part of a southern state, who gets into politics to help the poor deprived people among whom he grew up. It is generally regarded as the best novel about American politics ever written. The novel won the Pulitzer prize in 1947, has been twice made into a movie, and has been continuously in print for 75 years. In 1946, Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) published All the King’s Men. ![]()
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