A MATTER OF MORALS

A second novel (They Never Had It So Good) which is much less of a roughhouse and contributes some intramural insights and defeated conclusions on a university campus where younger ideals jar against vested interests. In the independence of the Arrowhead, the student daily, when it airs the expulsion of three students- politically suspect, and later a local strike, several are involved:- the Dean, who uses suppressive strategies to see conservative controls sustained; Philip Slidell, a reporter, who muffs his chance at the editorship; Victor Townsend, a professor, not too happily married and not too happily engaged in an affair, who loses his chance at the department chair when he refuses to interfere in the throttling of the Arrowhead... An object lesson in the destruction of values by expedient pressures, this makes its point, which is not a new one.