Charles Webb – shrinking from success

 

The weird life of Charles Webb, author of The Graduate novella made into the smash-hit iconic Dustin Hoffman Anne Bancroft movie has come to light with his death. He and his wife, both from moneyed backgrounds, gave away their wealth, homes, paintings and inheritances and lived off the grid with their children in poverty, taking itinerant jobs to eat. Latterly he and his wife appeared to be in England supported by state benefits.

“He had a very odd relationship with money,” a literary agent said. “He never wanted any. He had an anarchist view of the relationship between humanity and money.” He did write a few other novels but none clicked in the same way as his first.

He was born 9 June 1939 and was a Sun Mercury in Gemini but what dominated his chart was a truly difficult and hard T Square of Mars in contrary Aquarius in an angry, frustrated opposition to Pluto in an unyielding square to Saturn in forced-to-be-self-reliant Aries. Not a remotely easy or sentimental man.

He had another T Square from Mars opposition Pluto square North Node in Scorpio – which is interesting since that Node can carry with it a pattern of losing everything in order to transform and leave behind an overly materialistic way of life (= South Node in Taurus.) For many with these Nodes it can happen force majeure but he clearly volunteered for it.

His Jupiter in pro-active Aries was sextile Mars and trine Pluto so he wouldn’t be short of confidence. His Pisces Moon may have been opposition Neptune and square his Sun which would add another layer of ‘idealism’/delusion into the mix.

The driving planet of his chart was undoubtedly an afflicted Saturn imposing a harshly ascetic lifestyle on himself and his children. His wife (no date regrettably) appeared to be of a mind with him.

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