The Graduate [Paperback]

Charles Webb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

The basis for Mike Nichols' acclaimed 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman -- and for successful stage productions in London and on Broadway -- this classic novel about a naive college graduate adrift in the shifting social and sexual mores of the 1960s captures with hilarity and insight the alienation of youth and the disillusionment of an era.

The Graduate

When Benjamin Braddock graduates from a small Eastern college and moves home to his parents' house, everyone wants to know what he's going to do with his life. Embittered by the emptiness of his college education and indifferent to his grim prospects -- grad school? a career in plastics? -- Benjamin falls haplessly into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the relentlessly seductive wife of his father's business partner. It's only when beautiful coed Elaine Robinson comes home to visit her parents that Benjamin, now smitten, thinks he might have found some kind of direction in his life. Unfortuately for Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson plays the role of protective mother as well as she does the one of mistress. A wondrously fierce and absurd battle of wills ensues, with love and idealism triumphing over the forces of corruption and conformity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland): His novel makes you want to laugh and it makes you want to cry.

Chicago Tribune: A highly gifted and accomplished writer.

The New York Times: Brilliant...sardonic, ludicrously funny.

About the Author

Charles Webb is also the author of New Cardiff. He lives with his wife in East Sussex, England.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; Original edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743456459
• ISBN-13: 978-0743456456
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, July 24, 2001

By 

www.DavidLRattigan.com (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Graduate (Hardcover)

This little novel really is quite good entertainment. Most of the book is just dialogue, reading much like a screenplay, so it is hardly going to rank up there as an all-time great novel. The conversations between Ben and his parents, Ben and Mrs Robinson etc. are tremendously witty, and I found myself laughing out loud on a number of occasions. Ben is a considerably darker character than he appears in the (perhaps superior) film version, being a cynical and disillusioned graduate going through a depression during which he loses interest in just about everything and resigns himself to a life of 'bumming around'. I think I would agree with Douglas Brode, the film critic who wrote of the movie that it was not a story about the generation gap, but rather about a young man who feels as alienated from his own peers as from his parents' generation. This comes across much more strongly in the book, and we also get a very strong sense of WHY he feels so distanced from the rest of his culture - the superficiality and hypocrisy of middle-class America (this is very much a book of its time) is evident, and the reader finds himself disgusted with the shallow attitudes of the milieu in which Benjamin finds himself.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Classic, July 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Graduate (Hardcover)

As for all those extremely negative Swiss reviews, I guess this book and the white suburban upper middle class American sub-culture it so accurately portrays do not come across as funny and as true to people from other cultures. That's understandable; I may not be able to fully relate to an accurate tale of European life. This apparent lack of universality is a valid complaint. But the book sure rings true to me. Benjamin's frustration and rebellion are all part of the normal search for meaning and self-fulfillment that many people go through. It's a classic American coming-of-age story complete with a profound identity crisis. And the discussion between Ben and his father about fighting fires and sleeping with prostitutes in frozen fields -- well, it wasn't in the movie and it makes me laugh out loud each time I read it. That part alone makes the book worthwhile.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Must read, April 12, 2002

By 

Shannon (Louisiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Graduate (Hardcover)

I found this book to be loaded with unspoken richness and multi-dimensional characters, especially Mrs. Robinson. Charles Webb has created a very complex woman trapped in a situation that she regrets but can only try to hold on to because it is all she has. At the same time he has the main character, Ben Braddock, trying to find puropse in his life after he has already accomplished everything everyone else wanted him to. At 20 he finds himself out of college with neumerous prospects for graduate school but feeling lost and empty inside becasue he has never stopped to understand who he is and what he wants out of life. In this state of internal turmoil and kindred spirit, Mrs. Robinson, finds him and makes him an offer he tries to refuse but eventually cannot. In the end this offer causes everyones lives to be turned inside out. I reccomend this book to everyone.