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 Madison
Smartt Bell
The first piece of "serious and literary"
grown-up fiction I remember reading without duress was
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. I was
fourteen, and for the past two years my pleasure reading
had consisted entirely of science fiction-I consumed
one book per day in this genre. Not all of this time
was wasted, but the diet had become a little monotonous.
The lads a year ahead of me in high school were assigned
to read Warren's novel. I picked up a copy in a study
hall, to while away fifteen minutes of tedium. In that
amount of time I was hooked. First edge of cynicism
on its poetic valences. When I had read more of the
book I was taken by the richness of its meanings, how
thoroughly and thoughtfully the sense of every action
and episode had been interlocked with all the others.
I had wanted to be a writer before, but I had known
that this was what a book could do, or that this was
how you did it.
I reread All the King's Men half a dozen times
in high school, and at least once a year through college
and a few years beyond. For me it was a portal to a
whole lot of other serious fiction, but the novel itself
holds up very well under such intense poring. I have
taught to my own students from time to time, with good
results for both them and me.
George Garrett once said to a class of which I was
a member that one of the problems of college student
writers is that they were fed a diet of masterpieces.
Masterpiece fiction is too well made for you to figure
out how the writer did it. To pick up technique, the
thing to do is read genre. Where the screws and slots
are apt to be more obvious. So two solid years of science
fiction weren't wasted after all! But to that I can
add that if you have the patience (the obsession?) to
reread a masterpiece novel a few dozen times, then its
tactics and mechanics will begin to be visible. In that
sense All the King's Men was a good instructor
for me.
Sincerely,
Madison Smartt Bell
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