|
The point at which to get a grasp on the technique of All the King\'s Men is the narrative of Jack Burden, for the basic observation about the form of the novel is simply that it consists entirely of a story related by a created character who has observed and participated in the action that makes it up. It is Burden\'s supposed recollection of past events from a present time, but the attempt throughout (with the exception of the Cass Mastern chapter, occasional remarks of a sentence or two, and the final few pages) is to represent the consciousness of Jack Burden as it was at each past moment rendered, not to exhibit the past as interpreted through a viewpoint achieved in the fictional present. These moments range over his whole earlier life, and thus his narrative constitutes in one sense the autobiography of a mind.
-Neal Woodruff, Jr., in All the King\'s Men:
A Symposium, ed. Fred A. Sochatoff, 1957
|
