MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE
Charles Webb was born in 1939 in San Francisco. He was educated at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he graduated in American history and literature. The Graduate was his first novel, and was made in to a hugely successful film. His other novels include Love, Roger, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (also filmed), The Abolitionist of Clark Gable Place and Elsinor.
The Graduate, Ben Braddock, is 21 and not too much younger than the author here. He comes home to California, to a new sports car, and the rather fatuous bromides of his parents. He is an ivy covered status symbol - but he is also tired and very bored. And boredom, no matter how symptomatic or emblematic it may be, is a literary pitfall; nothing equals nothing and it is hard to make it add up to something. In Ben's case, it leads to some desultory drinking, a little television, and finally his seduction by the wife of his father's partner, Mrs. Robinson. The situation becomes much messier when he meets her daughter, Elaine, falls in love with her, follows her obsessively to Berkeley, overrides all interference (the abusive Mrs. Robinson; the disapproving Mr. Robinson), and finally grabs her, literally, at the altar when she tries to marry someone else..... It is hard to judge Charles Webb's actual talent since almost all of his book is in dialogue, in fractional to minimal sentences many of which reduce to No and I don't know and What , an all-purpose evasive word to avoid further interrogation. Next question: does youth speak to youth? (Kirkus Reviews)
