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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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It's Not All the King's Men, but...
it is still a very good book. Robert Penn Warren uses the same thoughtful, philosophical prose, using his Jed Tewksbury as a more modern Jack Burden. Where Burden was almost aggressively ambivalent about life, Tewksbury is a man always unsettled by the distant relationship he has with the world around him.

Warren's effort to encompass an entire man's life make anecdotes feel hurried and too detail-heavy. Too many characters make appearances to advance the plot. However, a stumble by Robert Penn Warren is still a thought-provoking, image-rich and strong performance against all other American authors. A recommended read, but no classic.

A great novel
Penn Warren is best known for novels written much earlier (mid-century) but A PLACE TO COME TO shows that he was not alienated by changing times and his powers were not diminished late in life.There are numerous scenes and sequences in this novel which are as good as anyone could do, and other novelists would do well to study how Penn Warren handles them (in particular, the moments of pathos, which could easily have been soapy if they were not detailed and so deeply felt). Penn Warren was obviously very committed to the book and while his protagonist is not clearly autobiographical, he imbues the book with his life experience.The novel does not have an overarching message or theme, but it is a great read, and only a great writer could have produced it.

A novel of self-discovery

Jed Tewksbury relates the story of his life in this solid novel: his humble beginnings in rural Alabama; college (where he becomes an expert on Dante); the army; his first marriage to Agnes Andresen, a brilliant scholar herself, although with her he only feels lonely and distant (she dies of cancer); the restlessness and aimlessness that follows. And then there is Rozelle Hardcastle (perfect name for her), his high school sweetheart, a thrill-seeker whom he jilts foolishly at the high school prom. He meets her much later in life in Nashville, and they have a passionate affair during which Jed realizes his love for her is still there (sadly, nothing comes of it). Warren's novel is an old-fashioned narrative in which characters learn hard lessons about themselves - especially Jed, who above all learns that "every man has to lead his own life and has little chance of knowing what it means, anyway." This was his last novel (his 10th), after which Warren concentrated on his poetry. Not quite as fascinating or compelling as some of his earlier works, but worthy of attention anyway.

Great Writer, Good Story
This novel is the grandiloquent self-examination of the life of a poor southern boy whose superior intellect, his knack for language and letters, conveys him away from the poverty in which his family stewed.

It begins with the death of child Jed Tewksbury's drunkard father, the recollection of which develops into a party spoof, a personal stand-up comedy act, that gleans popularity for Jed at college gatherings and beyond.He discovers his abilities with Latin and literature, attracting along the way the attention of the town's one beautiful/smart girl -- but she's a fickle babe who falls for old money and simply strings Jed along for a couple of decades.Jed experiences some periods of simpering self-pity, but grows more mature as the story progresses.

I think Robert Penn Warren intended for this tale to exercise the same degree of power as All The King's Men, and all of the elements are present (great writing, compelling characters and vignettes, introspective details), but the final product simply doesn't deliver the same overall impact.

One interesting point:One episode features a horse-breeding interlude, which was virtually mirrored 20 years later in Tom Wolf's A Man In Full.Robert beat you to it, Tom.

' A PLACE TO COME TO'
eNTERTAINING AND IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IT IS A VERY MODERN APROACH OF ONE INDIVIDUAL, FROM A VERY MODEST NEIGHBORHOOD AND BEING VERY WELL EDUCATED AND MAKING HIMSELF INTO A VERY HEROIC FIGURE. ... Read more

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A Life's Work
This selection of Warren's wide-ranging verse was published in 1985 and, if I'm not mistaken (and I may well be), won the Pulitzer Prize. The poems themselves, however, go back some six decades.

It is remarkable to read and compare the more recent poems with the earlier ones and to see, at least from these examples, that Warren was an amazingly consistent poet in both theme and technique. Nature seems to be his primary area of concern and man's place in nature's elusive design, but he also writes extensively of Time (almost always capitalized), sex, family, and death. In almost every poem one finds images of stars - which seem to fascinate Warren with their mathematical designs; they link the poems with a kind of leitmotif. Warren draws on his Kentucky boyhood for much of his material, in which he depicts not only the hardscrabble life in general but the more specific drama of his relationships with his mother and father. There are lyric poems and ballads; some poems are easily accesible, others come from more personal sources and remain at least partially obscure even after several readings. The problem that arises with any such comprehensive gathering of poems, especially from a writer so prolific, is the probability of repetition, and Warren himself, good as he is, cannot escape this predicament Still even if meaning remains hidden, one can enjoy Warren's considerable dexterity with language and image. He has a vigorous, firm, muscular grasp of subject and technique.

The poems come from all of Warren's sixteen major collections and opens with the most recent group of poems. His most famous poetic work, the book-length AUDUBAN: A VISION, is included in its entirety. ... Read more

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A lively, in-depth discussion of ALL THE KING'S MEN.Students are taken on an exciting journey of discovery through every scene or chapter.Also included are unique text notes, ideas for term papers, notes on the author's life, as well as a glossary. ... Read more

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Wrong title
The correct title for this book should be "Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men Monarch Notes." This is NOT All The King's Men. ... Read more

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" One of America's great poets writes of his father, lost through death and discovered again through insistent recollection. A death in the family forces a re-sorting and reshaping of all that we can recall of times and people gone from us as we measure our identities by their remembered images. While prowling in the past, Warren is drawn to likenesses between himself and his father, between himself and others of his family. The poet finds that his father too, in his long silent youth, ventured into the writing of poetry, as have so many, but in time put it away for other things. Gradually this elegy for his father becomes Warren's reverie on the many Warrens and Penns who live now only in his memory. We encounter his mother and his mother's mother, his father's Warren line thrown back over three generations, as he draws forth sameness, giving shape and full form and then sharp recognition to family members who were and must yet remain mysteries. Then we see that Warren is delineating the tenuous threads of all our many unsettled and fragmentary American family histories, that he is tracing all our steps from the coast over mountain trails into the dark wilderness to the west. With him, when we stop to consider our loved and lost ones, we realize the delicacy of our accepted relationships. In this autobiographical essay and the accompanying poem sequence that echoes it, ""Mortmain,"" Warren's look into the mystery of the past evokes for us the loss and recovery and wonder that death brings.

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One of the most striking parts of Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men is Chapter 4, in which narrator Jack Burden tells the story of his distant relative Cass Mastern. A Confederate soldier, Mastern betrays his best friend by falling in love with the man’s wife and then out of guilt tries repeatedly to get killed in battle but ironically becomes a hero for his daring, before finally attaining a mortal wound. In The Cass Mastern Material, James A. Perkins fully explores how this episode supplies the crucial piece to a puzzle surrounding Warren’s novel, tracing the story’s evolution through several versions and genres over almost twenty years.

Found here are both the earliest, short-story rendition of the Cass Mastern episode, originally published in 1944, and Warren’s final dramatic version, completed in 1961 and now made available in print for the first time. The play was finally staged in 1999, and Perkins appends related letters, production notes, and an interview that provide a context for understanding the work’s importance in Warren’s career. "I have always felt that the section is central to [All the King’s Men]," Warren wrote, concerning the Cass Mastern material. In a revolutionary reading of the novel, Perkins argues that the section provides the key to unlocking the mystery of Jack Burden’s paternity.

This unique volume affords a view of Warren’s restless creative process and throws new light on the story that formed the crux of his greatest novel—a story he apparently never felt he had exhausted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Cass Mastern the Play
This book includes the short story "Cass Mastern's Wedding Ring" (which became a chapter in ALL THE KING'S MEN), a untitled play about Cass Mastern, and criticism, etc.

The short story itself is interesting but can be a bit too "historic" at times. But basically, it's moral core of ALL THE KING'S MEN.

The play is a special treat for fans of the novel. Because RPW was a poet, he tends to write dramatic poetry. Some of the lines in the play are not realistic, but they are hauntingly beauty. The characters Bella and Phebe has been better developed in the play. Civil War buffs would also love the historical context; Warren really balanced out his love for history with his job as a playwright.

A Thesis Not Entirely Persuasive, but a Handy Compendium
Robert Penn Warren published ALL THE KINGS MEN in 1946, and it won the Pulitzer Prize.Its hero, Jack Burden, follows the adventures of a populist Southern politician called Willie Stark.William Faulkner read ALL THE KINGS MEN and singled out the Cass Mastern story as a "beautiful and moving piece.That was his novel.The rest of it I would throw away."Pretty harsh words from Faulkner, but it shows you the regard with which Cass Mastern's story, "Cass Mastern's Wedding Ring," was held in some quarters.

But in other quarters, it was greeted with a puzzled shrug.James Perkins argues that the Cass Mastern story is integral to the book, not some add-on extraneous story.While you could conceivably publish the novel without telling this story, it would detract from the experience Penn Warren wants us to have.In fact the British edition of ALL THE KINGS MEN simply omitted the whole novella length tale, not seeing the point of it.

What this book reveals is that Penn Warren was developing this story for many years, and he was not entirely satisfied with it even after he had won the Pulitzer Prize and after a famous movie had been released starring Oscar winner Broderick Crawford.He kept developing the story into dramatic form.All in all, Perkins reveals, he worked on this material from 1937 to 1960 (of course releasing a lot of other books too, so he wasn't solely preoccupied with this story.)Perkins includes a kind or meandering, pointless interview with dramaturg Eric Bentley, who doesn't seem to remember much, to bolster his story of Penn Warren's fruitless attempts to get a Broadway producer interested in the Cass Mastern play.

Perkins also fails to persuade us that Penn Warren's surprise ending to ALL THE KINGS MEN (when Jack finds out his true paternity) was itself a double bluff and that Jack's real father was exactly who he was supposed to be at the beginning of the book.I'm trying not to give away the spoilers here, although Perkins reveals them all by page ix of his introduction, so I don't know why I'm tying myself up in knots about it.Anyhow, it'll be a cold day in hell before Perkins convinces anyone that his blue eyes-Mendelian reading of Penn Warren is anything more than a Baker Street Irregular type goof.

It will be interesting to find out if the upcoming remake of ALL THE KINGS MEN, with Jude Law and Sean Penn, uses any of this scholarly material.And will Cass Mastern play a part in the movie?You know who would be great playing him, is Sam Shepard. ... Read more