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. ( )

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. ( )

The 1967 film and Simon and Garfunkel songs are such a part of popular culture, when I saw the slim tattered hardcover for 2 dollars at a used book sale, I had to pick it up - who knew it was a 1963 novel originally, much less the first novel by a 21 year old recent college graduate, of course! The first two thirds are brilliant and hilarious, the back and forth dialogue some of the best I've ever read, in particular Mrs Robinson's "seduction" of Benjamin. The plot takes a turn for the fantastic towards the end, but it was an anti-Adult novel for the up and coming youth generation and struck a chord. Today Benjamin seems like a psychopath, but then so does Charles Webb.

It's a novel of the suburbs, focusing on psychological conflicts rather than the external national, economic or racial conflicts of the decades prior. It's about anti-materialism in the boom years of abundance after WWII, the idea that a life devoted to stuff - including trophy wives and trophy young men - is empty and meaningless, a forerunner of counter-culture values of more spiritual pursuits. A great novel that deserves more attention from younger readers who wish to understand the generational conflicts of the 1960s.

Update: I just read a great article "Do you get the Millennial Generation?". Apparently the key to understand American history for the past 60 years can be found in three films/books: The Baby Boomers (1943-1963) with The Graduate, Generation X (1964-1982) with Risky Business and the Millennials (1983-2003) with The Devil Wears Prada (see the linked article for more explanation). ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )