Young Fogy

THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT (303 pp.)--Gerald Sykes--Farrar, Straus & Young ($3.50).

By all the old saws, age alone knows caution, and it is the adventurous young who storm for change. But in this novel about the political Trimbles of Trimble, Ohio, it is the son and not the father who is the conservative. A full-blooded international career of oil wildcatting, marital freewheeling and ambassadorial roving has left 52-year-old John Peyton Trimble irrepressibly convinced that "experimentation" is the first rule of behavior, "essential to the courage to be oneself." His politically gifted son rigidly practices a contrary rule: "Never bet against the house--don't be a sucker--be the house." As in his other books (The Nice American, The Center of the Stage), Novelist Sykes cleaves right to the secret core of his characters--ex-Communist literary snobs, envenomed small-town society queens, Point Four evangelists, coronary-conscious manufacturers. But this time he has also hacked a plot from political headlines, and so blunted his aptest insights.

When Ambassador Trimble refuses to back his son's campaign for Congress, son Hank starts nasty rumors about the old man and sweeps to victory by glibly explaining a suddenly uncovered big bank account in an emotional TV broadcast. Despite his newspaper plot, talented Novelist Sykes has written a striking book about a prodigal father and a young fogy of a son.

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