The Graduate, By Charles Webb
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.I'd unfairly dismissed Charles Webb's The Graduate, first published in 1963, as one of those novels outdone by the movie it inspired. But, as Hanif Kureishi remarks in his introduction to this new edition, the book is more than a match for the film, carried along on light and limber prose.
The plot will be familiar: Benjamin Braddock returns home from college, disillusioned and listless. He resents being an "ivy-covered status symbol" for his middle-class parents, and decides to stir things up: he has an affair with the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson, and later falls in love with her daughter.
And it is Benjamin, rather than Mrs Robinson, who makes the novel memorable: an unpredictable mixture of awkwardness and Ivy League arrogance, by turns world-weary and whimsical, he can be placed alongside Holden Caulfield and Jack Kerouac's Sal Paradise in that distinguished roster of dissatisfied American youth.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments