The Graduate (1963)

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. ( )

Description from Fantastic Fiction:

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

My Thoughts;

This is this months book group read and I have given it agao but have given up. The reason being is that Benjamin was really irritating me and I felt like he needed a good slap. Yes it is classed as a modern classic today but I felt it was awful. ( )

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. ( )

I would recommend sticking to the film. Over educated and under employed Benjamin Braddock starts an aimless affair with the wife of his father's work colleague, and then ditches her for her daughter. Cue surprise all round when Mrs Robinson exacts the best revenge she can. It's not just that the book has dated - the story is just not plausible or well written enough to rescue it as anything more than the most period of pieces

http://joriesreads.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/charles-webbs-the-graduate/ ( )