THE TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

Wow, a topical satire about crazy revolutionary kids and their really-kind-of-cute oppressor-class dads and one of those new male protagonists who's turned thirty and still has a lot to learn, boy, but is nothing like old, man. On the surface at least this is as slick as you'd expect with everything popping on cue and dialogue that's strictly prime time. The sweater-bursting red co-ed in this case hears Thomas Jefferson appointing her personally, like St. Joan, to stop the polluters, and the war, and give a damn, after her hapless professor/lover has turned her on to history, grass, and armchair leftism. She burns things down and god is he chagrined -- but it's really surprisingly funny all the same, and original in a modest but happy way. This probably has something to do with the fact that Arden is basically dead serious about his topics (n.b. refresher passages about Vietnam, over-population, etc., he awkwardly if thoughtfully works in) -- and bothers to write better than his story seems to call for.