The Graduate RosettaBooks Into Film edition by Charles Webb Literature Fiction eBooks
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Published in 1963, Charles Webb's The Graduate was a sly and provocative first novel that is often overshadowed by the success of Mike Nichol's sensational 1967 film.
The Graduate is a novel that speaks to its time a time when young Americans were beginning to question, for perhaps the first time, the materialistic values that the postwar culture had taught them. Its hero is at once worldly and naive, a dichotomy that won't last for very long as Benjamin Braddock, the appealing young man of great promise who seems to have everything going for him, sets out to explore his world.
After returning to his parent's home after graduation, Braddock ponders his future and finds himself in a state of confusion and depression. It seems the only thing that really rallies him is the attention of Mrs. Robinson, the bored attractive wife of his father's law partner, who makes a play for Benjamin who responds in kind. What the affair lacks in passion, it makes up for in intensity.
The affair with Mrs. Robinson continues until Benjamin discovers the Robinsons' beautiful daughter Elaine, with whom he falls promptly in love. Driven to a fit of jealousy, Mrs. Robinson will have none of it, and she tells her daughter of her affair with Benjamin in an attempt to separate the two. Undeterred however, Benjamin pursues Elaine, even though she becomes involved with somebody else. He pursues her all the way to the altar, in fact.
The Graduate takes a hard look at contemporary society and social mores, and while it does so with panache and humor, the underlying message is not lost on the reader. It is a scathing look at how vacuous and materialistic middle-class American life had become in the mid-20th century. The Chicago Sunday Review wrote that The Graduate "moves with the speed and drive of a runaway locomotive."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Webb seems to have taken the message of his book very seriously and has spent his adult life avoiding the sort of traps that materialism lays for people. Since the success of The Graduate, has shunned the limelight. Both he and his wife have sought to avoid the celebrity and the expectations that success could have brought them. Webb gave away most of the money he made from the novel and reportedly sold the film rights to the book for a mere $20,000.
SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
From classic book to classic film, RosettaBooks has gathered some of most memorable books into film available. The selection is broad ranging and far reaching, with books from classic genre to cult classic to science fiction and horror and a blend of the two creating whole new genres like Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man. Classic works from Vonnegut, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, meet with E.M. Forrester's A Passage to India. Whether the work is centered in the here and now, in the past, or in some distant and almost unimaginable future, each work is lasting and memorable and award-winning.
The Graduate RosettaBooks Into Film edition by Charles Webb Literature Fiction eBooks
( My review is worth what you're paying for it. I'm just a regular person)This book has importance in a cultural manner. Published in 1963 months before the Kennedy assassination, it captures the growing disillusionment of the younger generation in America at the time.
Benjamin can't put a name to his feelings of pointlessness at his planned future, simply because it was a time when it was socially taboo to address the meaning of middle class life.
By the time the famous film had been made in 1967 that disillusionment had reached the stage of a youth rebellion.
The affair with Mrs. Robinson and the following events do seem unbelievable in many ways. But this was a time young adults questioned their parents greater morality. Mrs. Robinson is made a rather unpleasant character to make this more acceptable to the reader. In a time before women worked outside the home in large numbers, little sympathy is given to Mrs Robinson. There is no pity for the Robinsons as a couple either. Trapped in a loveless marriage by the social norms of the time. They both clearly loved their daughter. I always felt they were rather harshly treated by the author. However this was true of the times, parents were harshly judged. Elaine rejects her Mother and the illusion her mother lives. In the end they symbolically reject the convention of even the church.
The parents of that generation had a war to catapult them into a speedy adulthood. The next generation took a good deal longer in some cases to find their way. This book beautifully reflects that time.
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The Graduate RosettaBooks Into Film edition by Charles Webb Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
I saw the movie version of The Graduate long after it became a cultural phenomenon. At the time, I was a little confused as to why it became a cultural phenomenon. The characters are unappealing, the situations are ridiculous and there are seemingly endless scenes of Dustin Hoffman driving back and forth across bridges and highways in pursuit of his baffling obsession with Elaine. Frankly, once the classic scene of Anne Bancroft's leg on the chair was over, I was bored.
I expected the book to be better. Sadly, it's worse. There's really very little here that isn't in the movie. In fact, it reads so much like a movie script that at one point I did a Google search to make sure the book came first. There's almost no description of anyone or anything, no characterization, and--as in the movie--no reason to care about any of these people. I suppose the over-indulged, over-privileged, self-absorbed Benjamin appealed to the over-indulged, over-privileged, self-absorbed adolescents of the sixties, but it's a mystery to me why any adult would find this novel enjoyable.
Like the movie, the book is full of unappealing characters in implausible situations, but absent the talented actors in the movie, the book relies on cliches like clenched fists and hands thrown up in the air to convey emotions. Occasionally someone--usually Elaine--cries, but it reads more like stage business than real emotion. The book is almost exclusively dialogue and that dialogue is often silly, unrealistic and/or confusing
"Elaine?" he said.
"Tell me."
"But Elaine?" he said, holding his hands up beside himself. "I mean won't you come in the room."
"I don't trust you," she said.
"You don't?"
"Why are you here."
"Because I am!" he said, throwing his hands down beside, him but still not looking at her. [random comma in original]
And like that dialogue demonstrates, the novel consists of scene after scene of one character coercing another into doing something he or she does not want to. Whether it's something huge like having an affair (the initial seduction scene when Mrs. Robinson manipulates Benjamin into her bedroom is cringe-inducing) or something small like making someone walk into a room or sit in a chair when they've clearly said they don't want to. It's the novel No Means No was invented for.
The version makes this dreck even more annoying. There are missing lines, misspelled words, confusingly written dialog (two characters' words are often rendered in the same line) and the occasional symbol instead of letter "?o." rather than "No." But it was not completely without entertaining moments. The moment when Mr. Braddock finally reaches his limit and smacks his selfish brat of a son was gratifying. (Sadly, he only apologizes rather than repeating the action.) The second most entertaining moment occurs in Santa Barbara. It's the biggest As You Know, Bob moment ever and it comes in a letter addressed to a man named Bob. Perfect. I laughed out loud.
The 1967 film THE GRADUATE, directed by Mike Nichols, had a brilliant script and iconic performances that seemed to define the 1960s frustration with status quo hypocrisy, and it remains greatly admired today—but Charles Webb’s original 1963 novel is often overlooked in comparison. Which is a pity, because the novel is often as witty as the film.
The premise is extremely well known. Benjamin Braddock is a recent college graduate, the son of well-to-do parents, who has become suddenly disillusioned with the life he is now expected to live. The wife of his father’s law partner, Mrs. Robinson, asks Benjamin to drive her home from a party celebrating his graduation—and when he does so, she throws herself at him. Benjamin is shocked, but he ultimately decides to take her up on the offer, and their affair continues for quite some time … until Benjamin suddenly, and unwillingly, falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine, a turn of events that sets everyone on a path to public scandal.
At the time, Webb’s novel was favorably compared to Saliger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE, and it is very much a portrait of disillusioned and rebellious youth. There are exceptions, but if you come to the novel from the film, you’ll find the film follows the novel closely in terms of plot. But that is not necessarily the case in terms of character. Webb doesn’t spend a great deal of time describing Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson, or Elaine—or any of the characters that people the book. We know their ages, and in some instances, we know their professions, but his writing leans hard on dialogue, and we are left to imagine what they look like, how they talk and walk, for ourselves. The greatest difference, I think, is in Mrs. Robinson. As played in the film by Anne Bancroft, she has a cool and predatory quality; in the novel she seems somewhat more house-wife-ish. The latter is, I think, somewhat more disturbing, because it implies her behavior is actually a commonplace for housewives and mothers everywhere.
THE GRADUATE is an interesting novel, fairly short, quickly read, and I enjoyed it. Even so, it is a rare instance of a good novel that became a better film. Recommended, but the film is the essential of the two.
GFT, Reviewer
( My review is worth what you're paying for it. I'm just a regular person)
This book has importance in a cultural manner. Published in 1963 months before the Kennedy assassination, it captures the growing disillusionment of the younger generation in America at the time.
Benjamin can't put a name to his feelings of pointlessness at his planned future, simply because it was a time when it was socially taboo to address the meaning of middle class life.
By the time the famous film had been made in 1967 that disillusionment had reached the stage of a youth rebellion.
The affair with Mrs. Robinson and the following events do seem unbelievable in many ways. But this was a time young adults questioned their parents greater morality. Mrs. Robinson is made a rather unpleasant character to make this more acceptable to the reader. In a time before women worked outside the home in large numbers, little sympathy is given to Mrs Robinson. There is no pity for the Robinsons as a couple either. Trapped in a loveless marriage by the social norms of the time. They both clearly loved their daughter. I always felt they were rather harshly treated by the author. However this was true of the times, parents were harshly judged. Elaine rejects her Mother and the illusion her mother lives. In the end they symbolically reject the convention of even the church.
The parents of that generation had a war to catapult them into a speedy adulthood. The next generation took a good deal longer in some cases to find their way. This book beautifully reflects that time.
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