Charles Webb, the fascinating and eccentric author of the novel The Graduate, has died at 81, just months after the death of Buck Henry, who helped make his work famous. As tonally different as the film and his novel are, much of the movie's dialogue is from Webb verbatim. >

Webb was generous and thoughtful when I was researching Pictures at a Revolution. He knew he had helped foster a belief that he didn't like the movie, largely because of a 1968 interview in which he said the movie's Benjamin, who disrupts a completed wedding, is "immoral." >

Here's what Webb told me about that in 2006: "Was I really that priggish? Yes, I suppose I was. But...if I hadn't been locked so tightly into that world at the time I suppose it couldn't have been conveyed in all its nuances. In Home School [his sequel novel]... >

I followed the film's ending, which seems right now...I had seen the movie. I got tired of people expecting me to give it a rave. They kept needling me to say I didn't like it--the stereotype of the disgruntled author--so I finally just said I hadn't seen it." But he had, and >

especially admired the casting of Hoffman, "the masterstroke of the film--one of them. I was stunned at how little like me, and how much like me, he was." Webb was an introspective, modest man who charted his own course. RIP. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/charles-webb-dead-graduate-author-was-81-1300794