Re-Issue of "All the King's Men" lets LSU make peace with memory of Pulitzer Prize-winner
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASENovember 1, 2001
BATON ROUGE -- David Madden sees the re-issue of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" as the perfect time for Louisiana State University to make posthumous peace with the novelist.
"One of the most famous stories in American literature is how LSU wouldn't match an offer Warren got from the University of Minnesota," says Madden, a novelist and English professor at LSU. "It's seldom that a campus would even make reference to one of its former professors, and it's extraordinary to hold a series of events honoring his work."
That's exactly what LSU will do from Nov. 8-16, with campus-wide discussions and seminars on the novel's significance. The event is timed to coincide with the re-release of Warren's novel, which will include 100 pages that Warren was forced to cut when the book was originally published.
"There are so many angles the book touches on, from politics to journalism to philosophy and theater," says Madden. "It's unprecedented for a novel to win the Pulitzer, then have a film version win the Oscar for best picture, then result in three play versions and an opera."
While it's not unprecedented for a university to lose a valued faculty member over money, in LSU's case it's a famous blunder the campus has long sought to correct. Warren is said to have harbored life-long hurt feelings at LSU's refusal to match a salary offer from Minnesota in 1942, after he'd taught at Louisiana State for eight years. In recent years, LSU has tried to make amends by resurrecting The Southern Review, a literary journal co-founded by Warren; holding a conference on Warren's legacy; creating the Robert Penn Warren Distinguished Professorship; and naming a campus seminar room after Warren.
A three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, Warren catapulted to literary fame when "All the King's Men," the novel he began writing while at LSU, was published in 1946, just a few years after he left the university. His epic of Southern corruption centered on a Huey Long-inspired politician named Willie Stark -- make that Willie Talos.
When the novel is re-issued, it will include the original name Warren gave his protagonist. According to the new edition's editor, Noel Polk -- who will present the keynote address at LSU on Friday, Nov. 16 -- "Talos" was deemed a name of ambiguous origin by Warren's original editors. They asked him to "Americanize" the name, and Warren agreed to "Stark." Polk says that was one glaring example of the political motives behind much of the editorial decisions in 1946, noting the name Stark is "not at all of 'American origin' but of German: but what better name for a dictator, in 1946, than a German one?"
LSU's nine-day program on Warren and the novel will include a discussion of the 1949 film version, according to Madden, but the ultimate goal is to stimulate the love of a good, relevant novel among contemporary students.
Contact David Madden, professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University, at 225-344-3630, or through Kristine Calongne in LSU's office of media relations, 225-578-5985 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview with Noel Polk, contact Mat Wahlstrom at Harcourt Inc., 619-699-6204 or [email protected].
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