I just finished All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Good book, although difficult to get through, especially at the beginning – I know Warren is known for his novel approach to Southern speak, but in the beginning… I was going slower’n a bread wagon with biscuit wheels. The story picks up towards the end… overall, the book is an insightful and well informed foray into the world of American politics… all about graft and corruption and hope and promise. As Lydia pointed out, a very fitting read for the times. One of my favorite points: That we will never be OK with the future until we are OK with the past. And vice versa. Inextricably linked to this insight is another Warren makes regarding parents and children. He writes,
When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.Jack Burden, the main character, describes his mother:
For years I had condemned her as a woman without heart, who loved merely power over men and the momentary satisfaction to vanity or flesh which they could give her, who lived in a strange loveless oscillation between calculation and instinct…After he sees she isn't this way, and he sees the truth about her:
I had given my mother a present, which was a lie. But in return she had given me a present, too, which was a truth. She gave me a new picture of herself, and that meant, in the end, a new picture of the world. Or rather, that new picture of herself filled in the blank space which was perhaps the center of the new picture of the world…
And that meant that my mother gave me back the past. I could now accept the past which I had before felt was tainted and horrible. I could accept the past now because I could accept her and be at peace with her and myself (433).
