Affettuosamente, Roger

by Charles Webb, Paola Forti (Translator)

For Roger, to know a girl is to love her. That's how it is with his earnest pen-pal Beth. And with Melinda, a lovely 'loon' from the Deep South. So what next when the girls meet up and get friendly?

Genres: Fiction

205 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1969

About the author

Charles Webb (born in San Francisco, California) was the author of several novels, mainly known for his most famous work, The Graduate. The novel was eventually made into an enormously successful film.

Reviews

[Liam Craig McTaggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun to read. Beautifully awkward and aggravating. Very funny and smart. Hard not to compare all of his books to The Graduate, but fairly similar. Which is ideal for me because I basically wanted more of The Graduate. I can't believe Charles Webb has been basically forgotten. No one writes like him. Unique and readable and enjoyable. This story took maybe one part that surprised me - but I trust Webb so much, I basically made myself adapt to the knowledge that he was right to do it, and I was wrong to question it. This book actually made me reexamine my interpretation of The Graduate. The Graduate has always been my favorite film, but the more I dive into Charles Webb, there's more in his books than could ever be in a movie. And the fact that Hollywood never really respected him, I'm fine with disowning all that. Webb, on a personal level, never needed all that toxic fame, and his work doesn't need a film franchise, or even to stay in print, for it to be breathtaking literature.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not stop reading this book. Not because I loved it. It kept my attention just enough, but the whole time I thought it was incredibly ridiculous. I turned it into a book safe. Definitely not a reread for me. But I still think about it from time to time, so maybe I'm wrong...

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a far from perfect book, but with this being the second novel I've read by Charles Webb (the other being The Graduate), I'm starting to think that he might deserve a slightly larger spot in the literary fiction pantheon than he's currently been awarded. On the one hand, the language is occasionally workman-like, and it's another semi-ridiculous, semi-tawdry concept: a guy looking for stationary to respond to one woman's marriage proposal gets trapped overnight in a department store with an attractive, psychologically unstable woman. On the other hand, Webb has an deceptively simple narrative style that seems to craftily cloak the larger themes he's pecking at. Systems with established esteem and prestige like higher education and professional success are once again drawn as roads to nowhere particularly edifying. More optimal shots at revelation take the form of deadpan erotic encounters and violently sudden professings of love and requests for betrothal. The book quietly shakes with a desperate urgency, as if The Graduate's Benjamin Braddock is banging on it from an adjacent church window. Also, like The Graduate, the book ends with an almost punk-rock refusal to say whether anyone is really any better off now. I didn't like every page of this book, but there is something about its overall attitude I found quite appealing.

[Erica Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just what I needed. So digestible and fun. Pretty smutty, cringey 1960s moments, but all around a good read. Currently on a Charles Webb kick.

[Laura Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I read this

[Ann Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was no love in this book.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

another dialogue driven novel of a shy man as I remember, read after the delights of the Graduate by the same author but not as good.