Near the conclusion of Gore Vidal's Washington, D.C. (1967), a political thriller spanning the years 1937-52, the novel's hero, Peter Sanford, expresses irritable despair at the human condition as he has observed it in his treacherous hometown: "There was never a golden age. There will never be a golden age and it is sheer romance to think we can ever be other than what we are now." Now, 33 years later, Sanford pops up again as the protagonist of another Vidal novel, set in the same place and roughly the same time, and readers familiar with the author's career-long penchant for...
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