Preview of Candy Summary:

Just as Voltaire's Candide had mocked naive eighteenth-century philosophy that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds," so does Candy mock modern permissive ideas that free love, frantic travel, and rabid experimentation in religions, mores, and life-styles are eagerly-to-be-fostered and endured. Beneath the masks of most "mod" performers is merely the rampant libido of another me-first generation of individuals who will exploit any and all ideas and men (and especially women) for purposes of selfaggrandizement. Yet, disquietingly, as in Voltaire, Nature herself — with accidents, reversals, small floods, and large earthquakes — contributes both to unsettle all things but at times even to advance the sexual promiscuity and carnage. Almost every single piety, faction, movement, and group protestation is reduced to shambles, for behind every civic movement stands a selfish (and sometimes lunatic) manipulator and solipsist. For all of its humor, Candy partly...