The Graduate

The basis for Mike Nichols' acclaimed 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman — and for successful stage productions in London and on Broadway — this classic 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 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.

The basis of the acclaimed 1968 film. Benjamin Braddock, a new graduate of a prestigious Northeastern college tries to make sense of his life with fortyish Mrs. Robinson and later with her daughter with whom he falls in love. Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katherine Ross starred in the Mike Nichols production.

Publishers Weekly

Graduating college provided no answers for Benjamin Braddock; it only furthered his frustration and angst with the world. Upon returning home, his disdain leads him into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner. However, no sooner does Braddock score with her than he is off courting her daughter, Elaine, in some perverse rendition of the Oedipal complex. Brick provides a strong narration of the text and executes believable voices for his male and female characters, as usual. His delivery of Benjamin is distinct enough to not seem derivative of Dustin Hoffman's performance in the 1967 film adaptation. However, Brick often portrays Benjamin as a whiney and petulant dolt much more than Webb's spare and sly 1963 novel suggests, which undermines the character's narrative. A Washington Square Press paperback. (Jan.)

Charles Webb is also the author of New Cardiff. He lives with his wife in East Sussex, England.