Words turning cartwheels
I read the most exquisite passage tonight...
"Shut the door and sit down," the Boss said, and his voice moved right on without any punctuation to something it had been saying before my entrance, and the forefinger snapped, "-- and you can just damned well remember you aren't supposed to get rich. A fellow like you, fifty years old and gut-shot and teeth gone and never had a dime, if God-Almighty had ever intended you to be rich he'd done it long back. Look at yourself, damn it! You figure you're supposed to be rich, it is plain blasphemy. Look at yourself. Ain't it a fact?" And the forefinger leveled at Mr. Byram B. White.
For some reason it took me 27 years to discover the brilliance of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." And I figure I'm lesser for it -- so I'm making up by trying to etch it in deep in my thick skull...
I've always preferred writers that can make the words spin and sparkle, but RPW does it with such depth, in such density, that I'm not sure that "All the King's Men" isn't the best American book written in the 20th Century. Maybe I'll have more conviction pro or con to that by the time I traverse the entire work.
Philip Castille, the Dean of Eastern Washington University's College of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences, is one of the foremost authorities on RPW's work -- I may need to have him tip me off to the nuances over coffee...
"All the King's Men" is being made into a movie again by Steve Zaillian for this winter with Sean Penn as Willie Stark and Jude Law as Jack Burden. I suspect it will be an Academy Award contender if it can even scratch the excellence of RPW's penned version. I know the previous cinematic "All the King's Men" won 3 Academy Awards -- including Best Picture -- in 1950.
Oh, and that strange post below this one is my cat Pistol's attempt at blogging -- believe it or not, he typed AND PUBLISHED that entry on his own, while sitting on my lap at the keyboard... freaked me out a bit...
"Shut the door and sit down," the Boss said, and his voice moved right on without any punctuation to something it had been saying before my entrance, and the forefinger snapped, "-- and you can just damned well remember you aren't supposed to get rich. A fellow like you, fifty years old and gut-shot and teeth gone and never had a dime, if God-Almighty had ever intended you to be rich he'd done it long back. Look at yourself, damn it! You figure you're supposed to be rich, it is plain blasphemy. Look at yourself. Ain't it a fact?" And the forefinger leveled at Mr. Byram B. White.
For some reason it took me 27 years to discover the brilliance of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." And I figure I'm lesser for it -- so I'm making up by trying to etch it in deep in my thick skull...
I've always preferred writers that can make the words spin and sparkle, but RPW does it with such depth, in such density, that I'm not sure that "All the King's Men" isn't the best American book written in the 20th Century. Maybe I'll have more conviction pro or con to that by the time I traverse the entire work.
Philip Castille, the Dean of Eastern Washington University's College of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences, is one of the foremost authorities on RPW's work -- I may need to have him tip me off to the nuances over coffee...
"All the King's Men" is being made into a movie again by Steve Zaillian for this winter with Sean Penn as Willie Stark and Jude Law as Jack Burden. I suspect it will be an Academy Award contender if it can even scratch the excellence of RPW's penned version. I know the previous cinematic "All the King's Men" won 3 Academy Awards -- including Best Picture -- in 1950.
Oh, and that strange post below this one is my cat Pistol's attempt at blogging -- believe it or not, he typed AND PUBLISHED that entry on his own, while sitting on my lap at the keyboard... freaked me out a bit...
posted by D.Rey at 9:11 PM
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