![]() ![]() It shows the political background and the political climate that produced such a person. This novel does trace the rise of a political boss, his reign in office, and his death, but it also does much more than that. The cover of at least one edition, for example, proclaims that it is a novel about "the rise and fall of an American dictator!" Even granting that this is an exaggeration typical of the people who write blurbs for the covers of books, this blurb does a disservice to the novel. One of the reasons for this unjustified neglect seems to be a misconception about the subject matter of this novel. Unfortunately, however, All the King's Men simply has not received the attention it richly deserves. ![]() It may rank behind the greatest of the Faulkner novels - The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and perhaps Light in August - and behind Melville's magnificent epic of the sea, Moby-Dick, but it belongs among the ranks of other novels that have received more attention, novels such as The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, and Invisible Man. All the King's Men is, without reservation, one of the great American novels. ![]()
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