Charles Webb, Elusive Author of ‘The Graduate,’ Dies at 81
John Leland
His novel was turned into an era-defining movie, but he was never comfortable with its success, and he chose to live in poverty.
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Charles Webb, who wrote the 1963 novel “The Graduate,” the basis for the hit 1967 film, and then spent decades running from its success, died on June 16 in East Sussex, England. He was 81.

A spokesman for his son John confirmed the death, in a hospital, but did not specify the cause.

Mr. Webb’s novel, written shortly after college and based largely on his relationship with his wife, Eve Rudd, was made into an era-defining film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, that gave voice to a generation’s youthful rejection of materialism. Mr. Webb and his wife, both born into privilege, carried that rejection well beyond youth, choosing to live in poverty and giving away whatever money came their way, even as the movie’s acclaim continued to follow them.

“My whole life has been measured by it,” he told the British newspaper The Telegraph in 2007, when the couple were living in a drab hotel room paid for by British social services.

Mr. Webb published eight books, including a sequel to “The Graduate,” “Home School” (2007), in which the main characters, Benjamin and Elaine, are grown up and teaching their children themselves. He agreed to publish it only to pay off a 30,000-pound debt, said Jack Malvern, a Times of London reporter who was friendly with Mr. Webb and helped with that deal.

“He had a very odd relationship with money,” said Caroline Dawnay, who was briefly Mr. Webb’s agent in the early 2000s when his novel “New Cardiff” was made into the 2003 movie “Hope Springs,” starring Colin Firth. “He never wanted any. He had an anarchist view of the relationship between humanity and money.”

He gave away homes, paintings, his inheritance, even his royalties from “The Graduate,” which became a million-seller after the movie’s success, to the benefit of the Anti-Defamation League. He awarded his 10,000-pound payout from “Hope Springs” as a prize to a performance artist named Dan Shelton, who had mailed himself to the Tate Modern in a cardboard box.

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