Flood: A Romance of Our Time

by Robert Penn Warren

HARDCOVER w/DUST JACKET

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Historical Fiction, Classics, American

440 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

He knows that white folks are human, even if they are white folks, and he knows, therefore, that we like the cheap and easy way to feel good. Like praying with colored folks.

Flood is a flawed novel, but a sweeping and densely lyrical one. A river in Tennessee is to be dammed and a sleepy town will be lost to the rising waters. That development is called progress. A hometown artist now screenwriter returns. The idea being to capture this turn of events as an allegory of sorts onscreen. The novel provides a long-fingered probe of History, often as distilled memory, sometimes as a mercantile exchange, there's little recompense either way.

I thought the opening sequence was brilliant, one where Ben Tolliver returns to Fiddlersburg in a white Jaguar and encounters a black man dressed as a court jester at a themed hotel resort. Both revert to type, to character despite both instances being forced and against their very natures. The Old Testament theme of the flood is explored through an eccentric cast of characters. Many of the convolutions challenge incredulity. So it goes.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading Flood I somehow though it was Robert Penn Warren's last novel and I was sad. When I finished reading what turned out to be a mostly unsatisfying turgid slog, I learned that he had written two more novels in the 1970s and I was sad. Flood did not make me want to read more.

After over 50 wandering and confusing pages, I figured out that Brad Tolliver, a successful mid 20th century screenwriter and Yasha Jones, a famous director (both fictional characters) have come to a tiny Tennessee town to make a movie.

Fiddlersburg is Brad's hometown and is less than a year from being underwater. The Tennessee Valley Authority is building another dam in that controversial government plan to bring electricity to Appalachia.

Brad and his sister are the offspring of a swamp rat father and a respectable woman of the town. The family history is complex and sordid, of the type you might expect in a Faulkner novel. In the course of the novel it all comes out. Brad confronts his many demons and has a sort of rebirth at the end.

This is Robert Penn Warren alright, complete with the search for identity and truth as people sit on moonlit porches drinking, talking, and revealing long buried secrets. It just was not up to the standard that I feel the author set up in some of his earlier books.

It seemed to take forever to read and that melodramatic tendency he had used to good effect in his better novels fell flat for me. I may skip those last two novels. On the other hand, I may read them eventually because he has let me down and then gone on to surprise me before.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gradual romp through the non-masterpiece (non-"All the King's Men") grove of Robert Penn Warren novels continues to bear tasty fruit. Why is his Pulitzer-winner the only one of his novels any bookstore stocks? I think a Warren renaissance is in order. "Flood" isn't quite up to the standards of RPW's "The Cave," which I'd previously spelunked, but it, too, shows off quite enough of his strengths to warrant a recommendation. Warren's novels feature flashbacks galore, an insistent, sometimes repetitive love of language, not much regard for readers who want their plots quick and hard-hitting.

In "Flood," a former native, now a screenwriter, and his director have come to give cinematic witness to the demise of Fiddlersburg, Tenn., soon to be flooded because of a dam project. For Bradwell Tolliver, the return to Fiddlersburg spawns dark memories that won't go away. Memories of the crumbling of his marriage and his drunken role as the trigger that led to the death of his sister's lover at the hands of her husband. The past, persistent bugger, ain't through with Brad; it never is in a Warren novel. Brad and Hollywood big shot Yasha Jones visit Fiddlersburg for inspiration; Brad isn't sure how best to present his screen treatment: through the eyes of a one-armed, dying white preacher trying to stay alive long enough to give the town its benediction? A black preacher with an uneasy relationship with the whites of the town? A hardened black prisoner nearing execution in the penitentiary that looms over the town and will survive the flood? A doctor in the outside world now practicing medicine (or trying; he's lost his touch) as a prisoner after his incarceration for the murder of Brad's sister's fling? All these people color Brad's thinking as he steeps in old memories. Then there's the pretty blind woman who beguiles Brad, and Brad's memories of his ex-wife, Lettice (that's right), lost to him after the murder scandal; a swamp rat called Frog-Eye; and an enthusiastic deputy warden at the prison, Mr. Budd.

Warren has little desire to take the basic premise in the direction many people probably feel it should go (I can see critics making masturbatory gestures right now), and it's hard for the reader to really get too far inside his characters, but for those who've read him, he delivers again. In "Flood," place makes the man, and Bradwell Tolliver can't leave Fiddlersburg even in Hollywood, even as his hometown is about to cease to be.

[Colleen Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this book--it definitely took me a long time, but not because I didn't love it! I just have had so much going on in my life, I'm generally too busy to read these days (unless for school, but hey it's my last semester so yay) but I think it's kind of good that this took me so long to read, because it was awesome. I loved coming back to it, and I think with a book of this length it sort of becomes your companion.
I don't really have much to say, mainly because I'm biased and love everything RPW has ever written (hence my rpw tattoo haha) but this was definitely a carefully crafted and well-written book, with intriguing characters and a town that will stay with me. The book is focused on the small town of Fiddlersburg, and RPW just does a masterful job creating this place and making it real. I think the location was heavily treated while the characters were less so, giving the book a strange feel compared to his others. Flood had so many characters, all interesting, and they all just sort of wander through the book and you never get a true sense of them, but you get close. It kind of creates this mysterious sort of effect and always keeps you guessing and wondering, which is great. I love books like this. I hope you read it--Colleen

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the honor and privilege of taking a creative writing course with "Red" at Yale in 1969.

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable and interesting novel about a writer who returns to his hometown, Fiddlersburg, in the deep south after a long absence. He comes with a film director in tow as the two are planning a film about the town, which is soon to be flooded due to the construction of a new dam in the area. Fiddlersburg is full of eccentric and colourful characters providing numerous subplots, while the writer's return sparks some uncomfortable memories of the past, which in turn begin to affect events in the present (1960).

'Flood' is not entirely successful as the main character is a bit of a twat and it sometimes veers a little too closely towards melodrama, but it's a fascinating journey with a lot to say on a variety of big issues including love, race and faith. Warren writes very well but avoids the over-perfectionist style of many poets who turn to prose, making this quite an accessible read. This book is well worth anybody's time, but the masterpiece 'All the King's Men' probably remains the best place to start with RPW.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great opening and middle, but the climax and resolution didn’t deliver. As with all RPW’s novels, this one is about self-knowledge, and about the “inwardness of life,” about reconciling the self and the community, and about finding peace and redemption in the midst of our broken hearts and broken world. But Flood seems to continually come back to images and their role in our lives, their power to shape, enliven, or torment. Not just for the artist who must capture life in some art form, such as Yasha Jones’ early hope of capturing Fiddlersburg in his motion picture: “He saw a light come on, far off there, in one of the houses clutching at the shadowy base of the hill. He thought of the human moment in the midst of the land. His heart stirred. He thought of the preciousness of that moment. That, he thought, was all he had ever tried to get: that moment of preciousness. But he had never managed to do it. At least, not the way he dreamed it. Perhaps he would, this time.”

But also the images we hold in our minds, of the past, of ourselves, and of a place of peace and wholeness we long for, that shape how we live. Brad’s image of Old Izzie Goldfarb “sitting propped back in his split-bottom chair, outside his shop, looking out over the river toward the sun going down”; and of Mexico “so surely there, floating high like a dream, aglow and beckoning.”

I don’t think the ending tied up all of these themes and motifs in a satisfactory way, but it was still worth reading.

[Honza Rillich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not that I wouldn't enjoy The Flood, I just (and am well aware of it) was unable to understand everything it says. The philosophy and psychology of single characters is often too overwhelming. I loved the omnipresent motive of the rising water and all the people being aware of the unstoppable end. I couldn't get closer to the characters, whose problems often seemed so much irrational and impossible to grasp that it just didn't leave any impression in me. However, RPW's mastery of narration glued me to the book and I don't regret the time spent, for it definitely made me ponder about certain things.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its odd to say that the only person to receive the Pulitzer for literature and poetry is overlooked and underappreciated but it is my humble that, as a novelist, Warren definitely is. While this book does have flaws, its strengths in describing a changing South and what it means to be Southern far outweigh those shortcomings.

[a.m. kozak · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline was a bit dull, lacking the drive to keep going. The prose was nice at parts - he has a smooth style - and there's lots of symbolism to be had if that's your sort of thing. Just OK, would only recommend reading after reading his other books first.

[Tereza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Southern novel with everything any Southern novel should contain. 🖤

[Brian Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this novel in graduate school for a seminar on Southern Lit. We used Flood as a one of the ways to answer the question, "What does it mean to be 'Southern'"? The premise follows the internal journey of a Hollywood screenwriter visiting his hometown of Fiddlesburg TN before it is flooded as a part of the Tennessee Valley Authority project. Warren's narration is scarcely more active than in this novel. I think this book is for any serious student of the South and Southern culture.

[Clio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Penn Warren is special and I always forget that anybody ever wrote anything like this.

"To be overwhelmed by the outward, moving multiplicity of the world - that means we can never see, really see, or love the single leaf falling. And, therefore, can never love life, the inwardness of life. Yes - that is the last sin, for people in our business - no, in any business - the sin of the corruption of consciousness."

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm surprised this isn't more widely read. I found this gem at the Strand. The role of memory and the structure of the narrative with the impending doom will keep you hooked while the middle aged protagonist ponders life. This my idea of classic Southern literature - would anything else be expected from the author?

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's Robert Penn Warren, so it's lovely and well-constructed, and it swept me along. But I don't know that it stands out among his novels: it isn't his best, and nothing particularly surprised me; it was somewhat predictable to one who's read several of his books. You might say it felt a bit Robert Penn Warren-ish. Which is not at all a bad thing.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't put it down. A feast.

[Faye Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting plot, but didn’t live up to its potential. Too rambling; often switching back & forth between characters & time frames; ending felt patched together in a hurry.