CHARLES WEBB: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obituary of Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate and gave away virtually all the money he made writing, from film and from inheritance, is up at the Guardian. You can link to it here; it should be in the paper paper soon. It is pretty much as I had written it, but it really begged for more space; his and his wife's lives were so peripatetic, and they were so steadfast and true to their beliefs, their story deserved as much telling as I could give it.

I think the film of The Graduate, which seemed so 'anti-establishment' to some folks in 1967, was way behind not only Webb, as I say in the obit (he wrote the novel in 1963) but also behind the young people whom the film was supposedly speaking for. It seemed very much a mainstream approach to a mainstream view, and what we remember most about it is the comedy, not the angst that is supposed to lie at its core.