The Graduate

Written by Charles Webb

Narrated by Scott Brick

The basis for the acclaimed 1967 film, this 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.

When Benjamin Braddock graduates from college and moves back to his parents' house, everyone wants to know what he's going to do with his life. Embittered by the emptiness of his education and indifferent to his grim prospects, Benjamin falls haplessly into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the relentlessly seductive wife of his father's business partner. It's only when her lovely daughter Elaine comes home to visit that Benjamin, now smitten, thinks he might have found some kind of direction in his life. But Mrs. Robinson is having none of it. A wondrously fierce and absurd battle of wills ensues, with love and idealism triumphing over the forces of corruption and conformity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Nov 21, 2008
• ISBN: 9781433255434

Charles Webb

Charles Webb attended Williams College in Massachusetts, then wrote The Graduate in reaction to what he considered the emptiness of his college education. The novel was subsequently made into a celebrated film as well as a successful play. Webb was largely silent for many decades, but after moving to England in 1998 with his long-term partner, he found fresh inspiration and wrote the delightful New Cardiff, adapted for the screen under the title Hope Springs. He died in 2020.

Reviews for The Graduate

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story line and witty interplay. I enjoyed the story but it is not truly clear whether one can obtain anything worthwhile from the story. The character of Elaine appears without self will and Benjamin seems largely disenchanted with life.

[Consecution · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It actually is worth reading the book...While it lacks the precision and perfectly manicured satire of Nichols' superb screenplay, and also differs in a few respects that I think favor the film over the novel, Webb's portrayal is messier in a more psychologically realistic way than Nichols' satire, illustrating in its characteristic, numbing dialog where Benjamin seems chronically aloof and cloud-lodged—"what?”—what a sudden collapse of trust in the empty values of the bourgeois establishment in the minds of one of its golden sons would look like...the havoc this collapse would wreak is not only a triumphalist bash against social superficiality, materialism, status-manicuring, obsessive professionalism and close-gated communities, but also a disturbing break from attachment that preserves authenticity in the one or two icons of sincerity it cleaves to, but at what strength or with what endurance we do not know.

[turtlecreekbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Can you like a book yet hate the protagonist and everything he stands (or in this case, slouches) for?Let’s start with the positive. The book is a quick and easy read (yes, that can be a good thing) and is well written. We’re not talking Shakespeare well-written, but certainly engaging. Presented primarily in dialogue, the book reads almost like a play. Considered ground-breaking and seminal, The Graduate was written in 1963 and was called “brilliant, sardonic, ludicrously funny” by the New York Times. This was the first work of author Charles Webb, who went on to write other books of considerably less fame. Actually someone could write a fascinating book about Charles Webb – his life seems strange and quirky to say the least (check it out chez Wikipedia).So far, so good.Webb’s character, Benjamin Braddock, has just graduated college and he’s emotionally and spiritually lost. He’s also a spoiled rotten child of what was then the brave new world of suburbia, financially pampered, emotionally and materialistically indulged. He seems to want to project an air of edginess, modernity (at least in terms of modern angst), and wants to reject traditional values. So how does our hero go about this? He mopes around the house after graduating, lolls around in Mommy and Daddy’s swimming pool, drives about in the sports car given to him by Mommy and Daddy, and has a sordid and meaningless affair with the (much older) wife of a long-time friend of the family.Our hero is also breathtakingly misogynistic – so much so that I don’t even know where to start. His treatment of the object of his shallow affections, the famous Mrs. Robinson, is reprehensible. Mrs. Robinson, despite being an adulterous wife, is actually the more likeable of the pair. She is witty, relatively urbane, and is perhaps more pitiable for being forever trapped in her suburban prison.Mr. Robinson, unaware of the relationship between his wife and his best friend’s son, thinks it would be great to have Benjamin go on a date with his daughter, Elaine. Not having a good reason to reject this, Benjamin will go on ONE date with Elaine.Mrs. Robinson has only a single request – and a perfectly understandable one. She tells Benjamin that he must not continue dating her daughter (well, duh!). Of course our hero, apparently unused to being told not to do anything that might flit through his mind, decides that he must have a relationship with Elaine and stop seeing Mrs. Robinson. Regular dating begins and Benjamin is quite taken with Elaine – he has nothing in common with her but she’s young, pretty, smart, compliant … and forbidden. Anyway, Elaine discovers the truth about Benjamin’s affair with her mother, and naturally doesn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Elaine then moves on with her life, goes to college, meets another man and decides to marry someone who hasn't slept with her mother.Benjamin, still obsessed with Elaine, now begins stalking her and finally barges into the wedding ceremony. The author now has Elaine ditching her fiancée at the altar and running off with Benjamin on a city bus (the bus was a nice touch I think).Well, I despised Benjamin, disliked Elaine, and had a mild distaste for Benjamin’s parents. Neutral on Mr. Robinson. Rather liked Mrs. Robinson. So if the goal of a written work is to evoke an emotional response, this book scores high for me. But I really hated every engaging minute of it.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read Charles Webb's THE GRADUATE back when it was new, and I loved it. His dialogue was cinematically good, which explains why it translated so well into film. I still remember the advice the newly graduated Benjamin Braddock got from a friend of his parents: "Ben, one word. Plastics." It was emblematic of the materialistic world he was entering. No wonder he succumbed so numbly to the advances of Mrs. Robinson, drifting aimlessly. I've read the book a few more times in the ensuing decades, and, personally, I think it holds up well, not only as literature, but as a document of those times. It could be interesting and useful supplementary reading for sociology classes today. And just as a footnote, I kinda liked Webb's subsequent novel too, MARRIAGE OF A YOUNG STOCKBROKER, which also became a film, starring Richard Benjamin, I believe. I wonder what Webb is up to these days. In any case, THE GRADUATE is still good minimalist fiction, and will probably be around for a very long time. At least I hope it will be.

[jonesli · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Graduate is a great movie; the book not so much. It was a short, easy read which read more like a script or play than a novel. Young Benajmin has graduated from college, is not sure what he wants to do and and becomes involved with the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs. Robinson. Benjamin later decides that he is now in love with Elaine Robinson, who he believes will marry him after she finds out that he and her mother had an affair.I suppose I never really figured out what happened to disillusion Benjamin from going forward with his goals. There is an "anti-establishment" tone, but it is never explored.There are parts of the book that were funny, but not nearly as hilarious as the looks on Dustin Hoffman's face, Anne Bancroft's portryal of Mrs. Robinson, and maybe the best of all, the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack. This is one of those cases where the movie surpasses the book.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this novel intriguing because of its style: it was almost like reading a play. All of the subtleties are in the dialogue, either by the words chosen or by the silences. The obvious misunderstandings in the generations, the young adults naivete, the old adults cruelty all come together to create tension-filled relationships where lies, mislaid good intentions and disillusion dominate. I'm not sure I truly understand Mrs. Robinsons' motivation for evil (I don't think she was much interested in Benjamin) and the ending has a goofy optimism which clashes with the rest of the novel, but overall I very much enjoyed the break in tradition, questioning of values and triumph of the young. Definitely representative of an epoch.

[ecantulv · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Just plain horrible writing. Yeah, I know it was mostly dialogue and that didn't bother me one bit. It was just the overall flow and direction he chose with his mostly dialogue written excuse of a book. I'm surprised I even manage to finish this book actually.

[sean191 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not a fan of this book. Even knowing it was written by an individual who had recently graduate from college and it was supposed to be something fighting against the establishment does little to increase its standing in opnion. Reviewers of the time called it heartbreaking and hilarious. I would lean towards calling it hilarious - hilarious that a novel which is absolutely chauvinistic, misanthropic, lacks plot, character development or witty dialog, could have received this much recognition.

[sanddancer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The film is one of my all-time favourites, and the book really doesn't differ that much. It is nearly all dialogue so makes for a quick and easy read.

[wellredhead · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought if I read the book, after only seeing the movie, I might be able to understand The Graduate better. It's easy for me to associate myself with Benjamin, working hard all his life and then being told by his parent's generation to relax for awhile. He just falls into relaxing and the affair with Mrs. Robinson as his avocation and never looks back. Until Elaine. I don't understand the Elaine part of the story at all. Why would she ever agree to a second date with him after he treated her so terribly on the first one? When Benjamin comes to Berkely, what makes her decide she loves him? They don't have interesting conversations or even discuss what they do and don't have in common. I could've understood her falling in love with Benjamin and agreeing to marry him if she had had good feelings and experiences with him before she found out about his affair with her mother but their relationship just doesn't ring true to me. I recently read that Charles Webb has written a sequel to The Graduate and Benjamin and Elain are married and have a child. I'm interested to see what it takes to make that marriage work and if there's genuine love and affection between them or just a general malaise.

[ague_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Spawned the hit movie, The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman. "Plastics!" The book has little description and is heavy on short snappy dialogue. Could be re-edited and released again as a better book.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Benjamin graduates from university but doesn't know what to do with his life. He drifts along, upsetting his parents with his lack of direction, and somehow, and one feels inevitably, begins a steamy love affair with a married woman, the eponymous Mrs Robinson.Then he falls in love with her daughter.The movie is far more famous than the book; many people, I am sure, are surprised to learn that the novel preceded the dramatisation. Webb's is written almost like a prose screenplay anyway, so the translation is quite obvious. The book itself is entertaining if a little pop-corny, but then what more can be expected? Deep and meaningful insight?

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I confess to have seen the movie first. This is a coming of age story, and a descendant of "Catcher in the Rye", IMHO. The film was better than the novel, but each has its charms. I'd rather re-watch the film, though.