""We live in the Republic of Feel-Good in a time when all the scum
of America is rising to the top." "So begins "Public Men, " the
final novel of "the University trilogy" in which Pulitzer Prize
winner Allen Drury concludes some fifty years in the lives of the
members of the World War II generation whose stories he began on
the eve of the war in the novel "Toward What Bright Glory?"
The second novel, "Into What Far Harbor?, " carries them on through
the challenges, triumphs, and tragedies of the war and on to the
years when they must worry about their world and the world of their
children against the backdrop of the later Vietnam War. Now in
"Public Men, " set in the year 2000, when most are either about to
embark upon, or have already entered, their eighties, the fifteen
who remain of the original twenty-six meet for a last reunion on
the beautiful campus where they shared a fondly remembered
fraternity house and the hopes and dreams of youth confronted by
history's most chaotic and ominously foreboding century.
"Public Men" concerns them all, but overshadowing their lives as in
the two previous novels is the life of Richard Emmett
Wilson--"Willie," now and for many years a United States Senator
from his native California; his legislative triumphs on Capitol
Hill; the tragic death of his first wife, Donna; his second and
third marriages; his political disagreements with, but ultimate
pride in, his older son Latt as Latt follows in his footsteps into
the House of Representatives and then into the Senate; and,
finally, Willie's campaign for president, threatened by other
personal tragedies, most devastatingly those of his gentle,
vulnerable younger son, Amos.
Through it all, Willie, often in alliance with Tim Bates, does
battle against what he sees as the "phony liberalism" of his famous
fraternity brother Dr. Rene (Renny) Suratt; and Renny and his
powerful friends of academe and the media in turn do battle with
what they see as the "reactionary conservatism" of Willie and his
friends. Tim, wielder of a savage commentator's pen, refers to
"Renny and his crew" as "the scum" he attacks. Renny responds with
equally scathing pen and matching contempt. As with many of the
public men in "Public Men, " these three fraternity brothers sum up
what they regard as the major political and social issues of
end-of-the-millennium twentieth century. Allen Drury skillfully
meshes the public and private lives of his characters against the
Washington world that has formed the rich backdrop of many of his
twenty-five books.
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