Peter Krupa

Noting that a new movie version of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men is preparing to launch, I feel compelled to warn everyone to please - please - read the book before you go watch the movie. It’s 650 pages long, and they’re the kind of 650 pages that you read in three days, turning them feverishly on buses, subways, in cars, while walking from place to place, over fast food lunches, and while smoking way too many cigarettes at three in the morning.

Then, after you read All the King’s Men, go find a good biography on Huey P. Long, the real-life Louisiana governor on which Warren’s book is based, and read that. It’s almost better than a novel. Long was the closest thing any of the 50 states ever had to a populist, totalitarian leader. One example: After he was elected to the US Senate, he still ran Louisiana through a puppet governor. If he hadn’t been assassinated, who knows where he might have ended up.

After doing both these things, you’ll probably harbor no desire to see this epic story chopped into a 2-hour film, especially one staring Shawn Penn sporting a shit-eating pencil mustache. Maybe he can play a corn-fed Louisiana good-ol-boy with a pug nose and a seer-sucker suit, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. As a parallel, try imagining Hugh Grant playing Indiana Jones.

Yeech.

If it were Johny Depp, I’d be curious to see how he was going to pull it off, but as it is, I think I’ll just save my $12 and buy another used copy of the book.

I’m reading an interesting book right now by Sharon Weinberger called Imaginary Weapons. It’s an account of how some fringe-science nutjobs wormed their way inside the Pentagon and, despite getting completely panned by the scientific community, still pulled down millions in Defense Department booty.

They had this idea called an isomer bomb that, using an isomer of hafnium, would supposedly be the size of a hand grenade, yet pack the punch of a nuke. The most interesting thing about this story to me is that it illustrates again that quality of being human that makes us believers, despite all evidence to the contrary - believers in Cold Fusion, in alien abduction, in 9/11 conspiracies, in a socialist paradise, in a loving God.

So I wasn’t too surprised to find that one of the main players in the hafnium saga was also the founder of the organization Lord I Believe. The topic is also a good illustration of Wikipedia’s shortcomings, as the obsession with “No Point of View” means that - thanks to the Believers - the hafnium bomb comes out looking almost legitimate.

Anyway, the book is a nice quick read, and sure to make the science-inclined among us squirm with frustration.