The novel begins with frat boy Hoyt Thorpe’s discovery of a sexual encounter between a Republican governor and presidential contender (and Dupont alumnus) and a Dupont co-ed. This episode goes unnoticed by the national media, but it and the ethical complications that grow out of it provide the novel’s backdrop—the absence of absolute moral standards.
At his commencement speech the day after having sex with the co-ed, the governor tells the students, “Over the next hundred years, new sets of values will inevitably replace the skeletons of the old, and it will be up to you to define them.”
Wolfe sure has his finger on the pulse here. Putting such words in the mouth of a Democrat would be too cliched, ignoring the New Men of the GOP.
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