THE GRADUATE
(1963)
First printing of the acclaimed novel, basis for the Academy Award-winning film.
Fine in near-fine jacket.
Price: $750.00
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First printing of the acclaimed novel, basis for the Academy Award-winning film.
Fine in near-fine jacket.
Price: $750.00
"Mrs. Robinson,' he said, turning around, 'you are trying to seduce me."
Classic early '60s novel of a rich, disaffected youth whose parents just don't understand. It is a great burden to be Benjamin Braddock, 21 and beset on all sides by expectations from the older generation: that he will get a job, go to graduate school, allow himself to be seduced, be polite at parties -- the expectations never end. "Ever since I've been out of school I've had this overwhelming urge to be rude all the time," he explains. Relatable, as they say in our own day.
By the time of the legendary Mike Nichols film adaptation in 1967, youthful discontent had evolved sufficiently for Benjamin's adamant refusal of materialist values to strike a resonant chord with the general public, despite the casting of an implausibly elderly Dustin Hoffman in the leading role and a certain disconnect from the deeper cynicism of the source material. Webb's novel lays out the case for Youthful Disillusionment as a universal defense, but unlike the film, it maintains a watchful distance from itself to the end, never quite taken in.
(New York): New American Library, (1963). 8'' x 5.5''. Original quarter blue cloth with grey pinstriped paper-covered boards. In original unclipped ($3.95) dust jacket, designed by Milton Glaser. Orange topstain and endpapers. 238 pages. Slight chipping to head of jacket spine.
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