The Graduate [Book Club Edition]
by Webb, Charles
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Good +/good
- Seller
-
Carrollton, Georgia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
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. Unfortunately 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.(Publisher).
Synopsis
Charles Webb's The Graduate, published in 1963, was a success for the young American writer, a sly and provocative first novel that is often forgotten in the shadow of Mike Nichols' sensational 1967 film and, more recently, an attention-grabbing stage adaptation in London with Kathleen Turner, then Jerry Hall as Mrs. Robinson. Among other things, Webb's novel is a book of its time, written when young Americans were beginning to question, for the first time, the materialistic values that the postwar culture had taught them. Its hero is worldly yet naive, but that won't last for long.The novel dramatizes the post-graduate blues of Benjamin Braddock, an appealing young man of great promise who would seem to have everything going for him. Returning to his parents' home after graduation to ponder his future in the real world, he is depressed. The only thing that rallies him is the attention of Mrs. Robinson, the bored but attractive wife of his father's law partner. Mrs. Robinson makes a play for Benjamin, and he responds. Their affair is far from passionate but it is intense. It continues until Benjamin rediscovers the Robinsons' beautiful daughter Elaine. He falls in love with her but Mrs. Robinson, in a jealous rage, destroys the relationship by telling her daughter of her affair with Benjamin. He is undeterred, following Elaine and forcing her to acknowledge him even as she prepares to marry someone else. For the first time, it seems, Benjamin knows what he wants, and he pursues her right to the altar.The Graduate, for all its crackling humor and addled romance, is also a scathing look at how vacuous and materialistic middle-class American life had become in the middle of the 20th century. What Benjamin does not want to be, it seems, is what is all around him -- his parents, their friends, their things, their values. He is a fascinating character, an attractive young man who seems to be unconnected to his own generation, a carefully tended boy who wants to become a man but does not know how. The wry insight of Webb's The Graduate makes Benjamin Braddock an archetype for a whole generation, a latter-day Holden Caulfield. The Chicago Tribune hailed Webb as "a highly gifted and accomplished writer," and Saturday Review wrote that The Graduate "moves with the speed and drive of a runaway locomotive."
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Details
- Seller
- Underground Books, ABAA (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 8664
- Title
- The Graduate [Book Club Edition]
- Author
- Webb, Charles
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Good +
- Jacket Condition
- good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Book Club Edition
- Publisher
- The New American Library
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1963
Terms of Sale
Underground Books, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Underground Books, ABAA
About Underground Books, ABAA
Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.
We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.
Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Rubbing
- Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket.
- Book Club Edition
- A generic term denoting a book which was produced or distributed by one of any number of book club organizations. Usually the...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Paste-down
- The paste-down is the portion of the endpaper that is glued to the inner boards of a hardback book. The paste-down forms an...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...