The Short Reign of Pippin IV

Posted on by Steve Harris

by John Steinbeck

ISBN: 0-330-02163-X

First published 1957

159 pages

Publisher: Pan Books in association with William Heinemann

Cover illustration N/A

4 / 5 Stars

A strange type of book by John Steinbeck, ‘Winner of the 1962 Novel Prize for Literature’.

Part satire, part comment, the book asks the reader the question, what would you do if you found yourself king for a day? Would you try to make a difference? Or just wallow in the acclaim?

It can be seen as a send-up of modern European Politics (as it was in the 1950’s). The story is that the French political parties decide that restoring the crown is the only solution to their multiple problems. Steinbeck lists the parties thus:

  • The Conservative Radicals
  • The Radical Conservatives
  • The Royalists
  • The Right Centrists
  • The Left Centrists
  • The Christian Aetheists
  • The Christian Christians
  • The Christian Communists
  • The Proto-Communists
  • The Neo-Communists
  • The Socialists
  • The Communists, made up of
    • Stalinists
    • Trotskyists
    • Khrushchevniks
    • Bulganinians

Hilarity ensues as Pippin is chosen to lead the country as Pippin IV on account of his ancient ancestry, as agreed between the aristocratic families, listed below:

  • Vercingetorians
  • Merovingians
  • Carolingians
  • Capetians
  • Burgundians
  • Orleanists
  • Bourbons
  • Bonapartists
  • Angevins
  • Caesarians

Pippin IV is from the ancient line of Charlemagne and no-once can beat that.

All goes well for the nation, happiness increases, there are wild celebrations and peace ensues. Apart from for Pippin who longs to return to his life of idling with a telescope gazing at the starts at night.

He even has to get himself a mistress which distresses him very much, although it is palatable because he doesn’t have to see her, and they haven’t even met. Still protocol is protocol!

And there it would have stayed, an unhappy Pippin living in a happy country, until one day Pippin IV makes a speech attempting to change the country …. for the better!…………Taxes, Wages, Prices, Housing, Local government, Pensions, and Land redistribution, all were topics in his first great speech.

And thus the story ends as quickly as it starts. Pippin IV is deposed in a coup with civil unrest raging throughout France. Pippin returns to his homestead a changed man, in an un-changed country.

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