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| Penguin Books UK, 1972 |
The first time I saw Melinda again, or thought I saw her, was the Sunday after Beth had come to Boston. It was between nine and ten in the morning and Beth and I had walked down from the apartment to buy a newspaper. At the far corner of the Common is a subway entrance, then a structure where a wide flight of stairs leads down to the subway tracks. At the top of the stairs is a small newsstand with a newsman standing beside it. It was just after I had paid him for a newspaper that I thought I saw her. Beth bent down and picked up one of the papers off a stack on the ground. The man gave me change, and as I put it into my pocket my head turned, and I looked down the stairs and into the subway station below. Just as I was looking down into it Melinda, or a girl who I thought was Melinda, was passing through the turnstile. Two women and a boy went through after her, then she was gone. I turned to Beth, who was standing beside me with the newspaper under her arm. 'I just saw Melinda,' I said.
The Novel: Roger Hart is an unmarried, unassuming young man who works as a travel agent in Boston. He has a sweetheart of sorts named Beth Knudsen –– currently living in Wisconsin where she's studying to be a nurse –– with whom he's been corresponding regularly since they met while she was vacationing with friends in his home city the previous year.
The need to answer Beth's latest, rather confusing letter brings Roger to Filene's Department Store late one afternoon as the store is about to close for the day. He has come to collect the personalized stationery he recently ordered because he feels that having it in his possession may make it easier to compose the reply he has owed Beth for close to two weeks –– a reply in which he must either accept or reject her unexpected if not entirely unwelcome proposal of marriage.
Roger has his stationery and is on his way back to the elevator when the elevator abruptly shuts off for the evening, obliging him to use the stairs to reach the store's ground floor exit. He has just entered the stairwell when a dark-haired girl standing on the floor above faints and tumbles down the stairs, her body coming to rest on the landing a short distance from where he's standing. Afraid that she may be badly injured, Roger carries her to the store's Linen Department and lays her on a bed where he gives her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Happily, the girl –– who comes from South Carolina and whose name turns out to be Melinda Gray –– regains consciousness and, after accepting his embarrassed explanation as to why he was 'kissing' her, asks him to please fetch her a glass of water. Roger obligingly returns with the water, uncomfortably aware that they could be locked inside the store all night unless they can find its night watchman and have him let them out.
They search the store but find no staff anywhere inside it, prompting Roger to remind Melinda that they're trespassing on private property and should probably call the owner or the police to advise them of their unusual predicament. Melinda, now fully recovered and apparently unfazed at finding herself trapped alone inside the store with a young male stranger, declares she's hungry and offers to make Roger a cheeseburger in its diner –– an establishment she visited, she confesses, before attending the unsuccessful job interview which preceded her fainting spell and subsequent tumble down the stairs.
They eat their burgers and discuss Roger's Beth-related dilemma, the pros and cons of marriage and the additional business responsibilities Roger has been obliged to assume while his boss Mr Becker has been vacationing in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka). Their discussion continues while Melinda tries on evening gowns in Ladies Fashions, telling Roger a little about her own life as the neglected daughter of a drunken actress –– admissions which result in him deciding that the best way to resolve his marriage dilemma is to invite Beth back to Boston for a frank discussion about their future. His mind made up, Roger bids Melinda a grateful farewell and sets off again to locate the night watchman. Melinda seems content to let him go, requesting only that he tell nobody that she intends to spend the night inside the store.
Becoming concerned after finding Melinda's discarded clothes untidily draped over a chair, Roger picks them up with the idea of returning them to her before he leaves. Melinda, however, is no longer in Ladies Fashions when he returns to speak with her. She is back in the Linen Department, making up the double bed that Roger carried her to after she fainted. She soon peels off her borrowed evening gown, gets into the bed and casually suggests that Roger join her –– a suggestion that results in him stripping off his own clothes so he can make love to her, apologizing afterwards for not having made it plain from the outset that he found her attractive.
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| Andre Deutsch Limited first UK edition, 1969 |
The following morning sees Roger back at work, awaiting Melinda's arrival at the office so he can keep his promise to introduce her to an acquaintance of his who works at an employment agency. (They hid in the male and female bathrooms of Filene's after awakening side by side in their borrowed bed, walking out like regular customers once the store had opened for the day.) When Melinda fails to appear Roger telephones her at her hotel, only to be told that she's busy and will call him back in half an hour. When she fails to do this, Roger closes the office and visits the hotel, entering her room to find it occupied by a man named Sal Hobbes while Melinda, dressed only in a blue bathrobe, dries her hair in its bathroom. Sal, whom Melinda met on the bus which brought her to Boston from South Carolina, has offered her a job as his secretary at his advertising firm in New York –– a job she's eager to accept because, as she puts it, she's had enough of New England and is tired of being unemployed and broke.
Roger tries to talk Melinda out of leaving, declaring that he has abandoned the idea of marrying Beth and will marry her instead if that's what she would prefer him to do. But Melinda won't be dissuaded from leaving with Sal who, having been surprisingly tolerant of Roger's interference up till now, gives him an angry shove and tells him to go away. Despite Roger pleading with her to stay, Melinda follows Sal downstairs, gets into his car and soon drives off with him. 'I stood a few moments looking after them,' Roger explains, 'then turned and walked back up onto the sidewalk. I stopped next to the parking meter beside the empty space. It was still ticking. Just as I was standing beside it there was a loud click; I looked down just as a small red sign came up in the other side of the glass reading VIOLATION. Then I put my hands in my pocket and began walking slowly toward the travel agency.'
The unforeseen loss of Melinda has a strange effect on Roger, causing him to be less diligent about his work and also about small but important daily tasks like keeping the office tidy and well organized. After a call to the New York operator fails to yield a listing for anyone named Sal Hobbes, he decides to drive there to search for Melinda in person, making it as far as the New England Turnpike before coming to the unhelpful realization that he has no idea whatsoever how to go about this. He returns home and gradually puts Melinda out of his mind, a task made slightly easier by a call he receives from Mrs Becker, the wife of his boss, who informs him that Mr Becker has suffered a minor heart attack in Ceylon which will indefinitely postpone their return to the United States. After assuring Mrs Becker that he can continue to run the travel agency in her husband's absence, Roger settles back into his normal if somewhat dull routine.
Roger is in the office, attending to the usual set of mundane tasks, when a man comes in and offers to pay him $10 to display a sign in its window advertising the local dog races. Intrigued, Roger accepts the money and, a short time later, decides to attend the races in the hope that doing so will be an interesting experience that may have the added benefit of distracting him from his difficulties with Beth and Melinda. After a long tedious drive through early evening traffic, he eventually reaches the dog track and manages to place a bet on the first race, only to find himself being accosted afterwards by a racing tout who turns out to be a pimp. The pimp tries to sell him the services of a nearby redheaded prostitute for $30, lowering the price by $5 each time Roger politely refuses to make a 'date' with the woman, insisting that he's only there to watch the races. When the dog he has bet on wins its race, Roger decides to spend his unexpected windfall on a long distance phone call to Beth in Wisconsin.
Surprised to hear from him so soon after receiving his latest letter –– a letter in which he deliberately avoided making any reference to her proposal of marriage –– Beth asks him to please forget about it, explaining that it was a mistake caused by the pressure of helping to organize her nursing college's annual Spring Festival. Instead of being discouraged by this, Roger tells Beth that he 'needs a change in his life' and, rather than forgetting her proposal, would really like them to be married. Insisting that it would be nothing but 'escapism' on her part if she became his wife, Beth rings off, leaving him alone in the phone booth where his new friend the pimp quickly sniffs him out. This time Roger agrees to meet the prostitute who takes him back to her room –– a cheap apartment containing nothing more than a shabby sofa and a single bed –– located across the street from the dog track. He begins to tell the woman about his call to Beth and his experiences with Melinda, even admitting at one point that the latter may be the true love of his life, not pausing when his new friend, conscious of what they are ostensibly there to do, begins to undress him. Undaunted, Roger then tells her about his time in the Coast Guard and his life at college and how he became a travel agent, moving on to the subject of his parents while the woman climbs on top on him with the aim of giving him what he paid for.
A week later Roger is sitting in the travel agency waiting for some customers to show up when Beth unexpectedly walks in, tearful and confused after quitting nursing school and flying to Boston via Chicago for the purpose of speaking with him face-to-face about their future. She feels guilty about rejecting him in her last letter, she says, explaining that she wanted them to be married because being together all the time seemed preferable to confining themselves to occasional weekend visits squeezed in between her ongoing nursing exams. She then shows Roger a few of the books she's been reading –– marriage manuals with which she hopes to expand her rudimentary knowledge of sex –– and suggests they make love behind a filing cabinet where it will be impossible for them to be seen by anybody passing on the street. They do this and then Beth moves into his apartment, the two of them settling into what passes for normal married life without going to the trouble of formalizing the arrangement in either a church or a registry office. By this time Roger has come clean about his department store adventure with Melinda, whom he continues to think about from time to time in an abstract 'wonder what she's doing now' type of way.
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| Bantam Books USA, c 1970 |
Beth is with Roger when he spots Melinda –– or, at least, a girl he thinks is Melinda –– roaming the streets of Boston early one Sunday morning. Beth encourages him to approach her but unfortunately Melinda disappears before he can do this. But all is not lost. A few days later, while he and Beth are out shopping together, Roger spots his fiancée talking to a girl outside a shoe store whom he immediately recognizes as the frustratingly elusive Melinda. Although he again fails to speak to her, Beth later reveals that Melinda flew to Boston from Chicago –– where she'd gone after leaving Sal to enquire about an already filled job as a waitress in a nightclub –– on the same plane in which she herself flew from Wisconsin to Massachusetts. Beth also reveals that Melinda was on her way to the train station when Roger spotted them chatting because her new plan is to return to her childhood home in South Carolina.
Roger departs immediately for the railway station, boarding Melinda's train only minutes before it's scheduled to pull out. After finding her in her already paid for seat, he convinces her to disembark from the train and remain in Boston, promising to help her find a job as he promised to do before she ran off to New York with the thoroughly unwholesome Sal Hobbes. After leading her back to the platform, Roger calls Beth who informs him that the shoe store needs a salesgirl –– a job Melinda applies for and is offered on the spot. Lacking a place to stay, Beth suggests that Melinda move in with herself and Roger, insisting that the arrangement, while a little unorthodox, will not upset her.
That afternoon Roger makes love to Melinda in the bedroom while Beth reads a magazine in the living room. Not long after this Roger hits upon the idea of the three of them pooling their resources to buy a house together. Convinced they can make a success of their accidental but collectively beneficial ménage à trois, he makes an appointment with a realtor, telling the man as he shows them through a suitably spacious property in the upscale suburb of Brookline that he, Beth and Melinda are 'just friends.' Although he seems a little skeptical at first, the realtor eventually accepts this story, inviting Roger to take a look around and keep doing so for as long as he likes.
The charm of a novel like Love, Roger lies in the intriguing ambivalence of its characters and their failure to connect with each other in any way except sexually. As he did so brilliantly in his debut novel The Graduate (1963), Webb reveals a world dominated by inexpressible feelings of anxiety which find their unsatisfying outlet in a convenient if emotionally empty form of sexual fatalism. The writing is dryly minimalistic, driven largely by dialogue which seems to conceal as much as it reveals about Roger, Beth, Melinda and the difficulties they encounter in attempting to make their minds up not only about each other but also about themselves and what they're seeking from life, love and relationships. It's their combined sense of uncertainty –– of coincidence and convenience usurping self-knowledge and undermining their ability to take any form of affirmative action –– that makes the book such an interesting examination of the attitudes prevalent among so many young North Americans in the closing years of the 1960s. Will Roger and his lovers find what they're seeking by moving in together? Or will contentment continue to elude them, fueled by what is today referred to as FOMO or 'the Fear Of Missing Out'? Webb is much too clever a writer to provide or even attempt to provide answers to these questions. Instead, he leaves it to the reader to make up their own mind about Roger, the two not entirely different women in his life and their chances of enjoying any sort of long-term happiness together.
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| CHARLES WEBB, c 1980 |
The Writer: Everybody knows who 'Mrs Robinson' is and who she was trying to seduce in Mike Nichols's award-winning 1967 cinematic adaptation of The Graduate. What is less well known is that the characters so memorably portrayed by Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in the film were born in the imagination of a young Californian novelist named Charles Webb. 'Although the film wasn't my hit,' he told Britain's Telegraph newspaper in 2007, 'my whole life has been measured by it. I've no idea how life would have turned out had it not been for this phenomenon, but everything would have been very different. That's for sure.'
Webb, the son of a heart specialist, was born on 9 June 1939 in San Francisco and grew up in the southern Californian city of Pasadena, ten miles from downtown Los Angeles. 'My early life,' he said in the short documentary Meeting With An Author made about him by Canal+ in 2007, 'was more or less formed in the Pasadena society which, at the time, was considered for the area sort of créme de la créme.' Pasadena, an affluent town famous for its pristine collection of pre-World War Two bungalows, would later become the setting for The Graduate with several parts of its subsequent Academy Award winning cinematic adaptation also being filmed there.
Webb attended the Chandler School in Pasadena before moving on to Midland, a college prep school located in nearby Los Olivos. After completing his studies here he departed for Williams College in the eastern state of Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1961. 'College was pretty much a bore,' Webb later observed, 'but what I recall was that I studied American history and literature as a major.' He spent most of his time in the company of friends, with whom he 'moved around and hitchhiked around a lot' while somehow maintaining the grade point average required to keep him in school so he wouldn't have to return to California and the stultifying life his parents had long since mapped out for him. It was in college that his lifelong interest in writing –– primarily drama at this stage –– began to assert itself, culminating in him winning his college's annual award for creativity in his senior year. He spent 'the next couple of years trying to put together a book that would express my feelings and some kind of story. I didn't think it was too important what the story was, but I wanted to get it out of my system… I had a pretty negative reaction to my educational experience and this seemed like a good way to get rid of it. And it turned out to be The Graduate. But for me that was primarily an opportunity just to leave all that behind.'
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| Signet USA film tie-in edition, 1967 |
Webb had other reasons for writing the book, not least of which were the difficult relationships he had always had with his wealthy, socially prominent parents. Although his father helped him to find a publisher for his novel (Edward Burlingame of The New American Library), he was as disapproving of the book and what it said about the people of his exclusive country club milieu as he was of everything else his son had ever tried to do. 'My father's attitude towards The Graduate was illustrative of the way he was. When the book came out, he was appalled that I could have brought such shame on the family. Then when the film was a hit, he kept going, "That's my boy!" ' The book elicited a similarly negative response from Webb's mother. 'She was always reading books,' he remembered in his Telegraph interview, 'so I thought I'd see if I could write one. I was always looking for crumbs of approval from her. But it didn't work; she was a very disapproving person.'
This perhaps explains why Webb turned down a large inheritance from his father and, after marrying a woman named Eve in 1964, gradually divested himself of all his personal property, including a house in Massachusetts estimated to be worth upward of one million dollars. He always maintained that there was 'no great principle involved' in his decision to do this. 'We just felt more comfortable living a fairly basic lifestyle. Afterwards we traveled about doing all sorts of jobs –– as caretakers, fruit-pickers, dish-washers… those sorts of things.'
He was working in the perfume department of Bullock's Department Store in Pasadena when The Graduate –– the film rights to which he had sold for a flat fee of $20,000 which also ceded ownership of its characters to the purchaser in perpetuity –– was released in 1967, making him an overnight celebrity. 'I'd be going out at the end of the day after work and some guy with a camera would be walking along beside me, taking my picture as I was walking down the sidewalk. Someone else would be sticking a microphone in my face asking me questions. It was just very bizarre.' Unlike the film, which received rave reviews and is now regarded as a classic of twentieth century North American cinema, the novel earned only lukewarm reviews, with several critics being put off by Webb's wry detached dialogue, much of which found its way to the screen unaltered. Edward Burlingame, however, was immediately struck by the novel's quirky characters and the clearly autobiographical tale it told. 'I was amazed,' the publisher admitted to a journalist in a 2017 interview. 'Not just because it wasn’t what I had anticipated but because it was so original. It really was a very original book with absolutely brilliant but somewhat weird dialogue.'
Webb's life became equally bizarre following the publication of his second novel Love, Roger in 1969. Now a father himself, he refused to allow either of his sons to enter the North American school system, preferring to home school them at a time when doing so was illegal in most parts of the country. He and Eve also divorced in the early 1970s as a form of protest against the institution of marriage. (They never lived apart and continued to function as man and wife in every respect, something that became increasingly important following the nervous breakdown Eve –– who for many years insisted on being known as Fred as a gesture of solidarity with men named Fred who experienced low self-esteem –– suffered in the early 1980s.) Somehow, Webb still found time to write, publishing his third novel The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker in 1970 and his fourth Orphans and Other Children five years later despite living what he described as an 'itinerant' life in trailer parks, campsites and cheap, out of the way motels. The Abolitionist of Clark Gable Place (1976) was followed by Elsinor (1977) and then by Booze (1979) which was the last novel he would publish until 2002 when New Cardiff appeared. This book served as the basis for the 2003 film Hope Springs starring Colin Firth, Heather Graham and Minnie Driver.
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| CHARLES WEBB, 2005 |
Home School, the novel he stated would be definitely be his last, was written in 2005 but not published until 2007 due to the complex legal issues surrounding the ownership of the characters he created for The Graduate. The book, a sequel to his first novel which sees Benjamin and Elaine fighting to have their children home schooled with the help of the elderly but still wily Mrs Robinson, was reviewed unfavorably by the critics, with the Kirkus Review cynically dismissing it as 'A bit of fluff sure to satisfy those clamoring for a Graduate sequel.' The reviewer may not have been aware that Webb and Fred, who had moved to England in 1999, were practically destitute at the time it was published and living on the dole in a property loaned to them by someone who had heard of their unpromising plight on the radio. They were still living in Sussex, in the seaside town of Eastbourne, in 2007 when Webb was interviewed to mark the fortieth anniversary of the release of the film version of The Graduate and promote his final novel.
According to Edward Burlingame, Charles Webb continued to live in Eastbourne after splitting up with Fred some time around 2005. Webb was apparently still living there when he died of a blood disease on 16 June 2020.
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| Penguin Modern Classics UK, 2010 |
The film adaptation of The Graduate (1967) –– starring DUSTIN HOFFMAN as Benjamin Braddock, KATHERINE ROSS as Elaine Robinson and ANNE BANCROFT as Mrs Robinson –– remains widely available in various formats in most regions of the world.
Last updated 4 July 2023
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