Charles Richard Webb (June 9, 1939 – June 16, 2020) was an American novelist. His most famous work is the 1963 novel The Graduate, which was made into a 1967 film of the same name. Life and career Webb was born in San Francisco and grew up in Pasadena, California. He attended Chandler School, Midland School in Los Olivos, California, and graduated from Williams College in 1961. Webb lived for several years in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Webb married Eve Rudd in 1962; they divorced in 1981 in protest at the institution of marriage, but remained a couple. They remarried in 2001 because of immigration rules, and remained together until her death in 2019. Eve shaved her head and called herself "Fred" in solidarity with a Californian support group called Fred, for men who have low self-esteem. Fred was an artist and her work included illustrations for Webb's 2002 novel New Cardiff. The couple had two sons, John and David; the latter is now a performance artist who once cooked and ate a copy of The Graduate with cranberry sauce, reportedly to his father's delight. The Webbs removed their children from school so that they could tutor them at home.This was illegal in California at the time, and to evade the authorities they fled the state; at one point they managed a nudist camp in New Jersey. They also divorced – accounts vary as to why (it was not due to personal differences), either in protest against the institution of marriage, or against the United States's lack of marriage rights for gay people. They sold their wedding presents back to their guests, and having given away four houses in succession lived on the breadline, taking menial jobs as cleaners, cooks and fruit-pickers, working at K-Mart and living in a shack. They lived in Eastbourne, East Sussex, England. Webb died in Eastbourne from a blood condition on June 16, 2020, at the age of 81. Non-materialist lifestyle Webb lived a non-materialist lifestyle in what amounted to poverty for much of his life. He declined an inheritance from his father, a wealthy doctor. He sold the film rights to The Graduate for a token one-time payment of $20,000 and made nothing further, including from stage adaptions. He donated the copyright to the Anti-Defamation League. He and his wife donated most of their possessions including art by Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. They lived