The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Audio Books)
Description
A life lived backwards, with events happening in reverse order forms the strange and unexpected framework of one of F Scott Fitzgerald's rare short stories.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was published in Collier's in 1927 and the idea came to Fitzgerald apparently from a quote of Mark Twain's in which he regretted that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end. Fitzgerald's concept of using this notion and turning the normal sequence of life on its head resulted in this delightful, thought provoking fantasy tale. The story was later incorporated in a Fitzgerald anthology, Tales of the Jazz Age.
The story opens with a young, high society couple who are shocked beyond belief when they discover that their much awaited first born child resembles an elderly gent of seventy, complete with a white beard and whiskers, sitting up and querulously demanding to know, “Are you my father?” Their young son is born to live out a peculiar destiny. And so begins a grotesque journey through life, with the child, Benjamin “growing down” instead of up.
Set in the Baltimore of the 1860s the story is also a satire of contemporary American society of the time. Though Fitzgerald maintains a cool and light tone throughout the story, it is in fact, deeply reflective and a very interesting take on the human condition.
For contemporary readers who are familiar with the problems of aging and “second childhood” Benjamin Button's difficulties with dealing with the demands of his chronological age vs his mental age are extremely interesting. As we find more and more older people succumbing to Alzheimer's disease and dementia, requiring the kind of care that an infant does, the story is strangely prophetic of the condition of geriatric care in our century. The plot is not exactly new to literature, with several stories and novels being written on a similar theme by many other writers. However, Fitzgerald's take on growing old and how we humans deal with it is what sets The Curious Case of Benjamin Button apart.
The style is extremely readable, the premise is intriguing and refreshingly different and appeals to readers of all ages. The story was adapted into a film in 2008 and continues to fascinate Fitzgerald fans the world over.
About the Author
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896
- 1940), better known as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American author of
novels and short stories, born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and raised in an
Irish middle class family. He is best known for his masterpiece,
The Great Gatsby and
Tender Is the Night.
The author was named after his famous second cousin, Francis Scott Key, who penned The Star Spangled Banner.
Fitzgerald's
prolific short stories tend to center around the promise of youth,
followed by the effects of age and despair. Fitzgerald was considered
one of the best authors of the twentieth century, a leading voice for
the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s and the Jazz Age.
F. Scott
Fitzgerald spent a great deal of his youth in Buffalo,
New York, then moved to New Jersey to attend Princeton University.
Fitzgerald dropped out and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917 on the
brink of World War I, but did not see combat. He became an officer,
married, and after being decommissioned, went to New York City to pursue
his literary career. This Side of Paradise was his first successful
novel, allowing him to travel extensively in Paris and the French
Riviera in the 1920s, creating the backdrop for his most
widely-acclaimed work, The Great Gatsby which was published in 1925. He
befriended great authors such as Ernest Hemingway during this period.
Fitzgerald contributed stories to The Saturday Evening Post for most of
his career. The first story in which his name appeared on the cover was
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1920).
Fitzgerald
was in poor health after spending most of his adulthood abusing alcohol
and suffered three heart attacks. He died at the age of 44 in 1941.
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