All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

The story is about Willie Stark, a slick politician of humble birth, who was based on real-life Huey Long, a Louisiana governor, but the real main character is Jack Burden, a reporter who serves to narrate the story and Stark's rise to power.

It took me a long time to read this somewhat peculiar novel. I can't quite work out how much I enjoyed it. It's thoughtful, cerebral, but often meandering and difficult to follow. I expected the book to be mainly about Willie Stark, but in reality it was much more about Jack and his internal monologue.

Note to self: This was incredible. After sitting on my to-read shelf for over a year, I finally pulled my way through the first chapters and was hooked by halfway. The structure, the language, the loftiness. Robert Penn Warren, like Conroy, paints a picture of the tainted South so gorgeously that it's hard not to want to escape to the humid languor of the Southern coast, despite the region's myriad faults.

There are parts of this book that I did not prefer (some of the language), but I expect that it would be fairly realistic dialog for these characters in the era in which this was set. The character study here is fascinating. It was not a light read, but was very worthwhile.