The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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Publisher Description
The 1920s in the United States were known as the “Roaring Twenties” and the ultimate Jazz Age for the nation, a time that glorified hard and fast living. And nobody personified it or wrote so descriptively about it as F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), whose name became synonymous with the times after penning the epic Great Gatsby.
Along with his dazzling wife Zelda, Fitzgerald was all too keen to play the role. When his writing made them celebrities, they were celebrated by the national press for being “young, seemingly wealthy, beautiful, and energetic.” While Scott used their relationship as material in his novels, Zelda wrote herself, and she also strove to become a ballerina.
The Fitzgerald barely outlasted the ‘20s. Their hard living left Fitzgerald, a notorious alcoholic, in poor health by the ‘30s. Financially broke, he would die of a massive heartattack in 1940, by which time Zelda had already suffered various mental illnesses. Zelda died in a freak fire in 1948, both Fitzgeralds having burned out almost as quickly as they had shined.
Interest in the Fitzgeralds, and particularly his writing, revived in the ‘50s and has been steady ever since, with Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby and other stories like This Side of Paradise being read in classrooms across the United States. In addition to their extraordinary literary quality, they continue to represent the optimism of the Roaring Twenties.
One of Fitzgerald’s best known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", tells the story of Benjamin Button, who was born an old man but died young, with age being reversed. The story was introduced to new generations in a popular motion picture starring Brad Pitt a few years ago.
This edition of Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with over a dozen pictures of the Fitzgeralds, their lives, and works.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The impending release of a movie version starring Brad Pitt has made this humorous tale, formerly among the least known of Fitzgerald's short stories, a hot property. DeFillippis and Weir's adaptation preserves the original's straight-faced tone describing the career of a man who begins life in his 70s and grows progressively younger. If bystanders find this more than "curious," they usually are just irritated at Benjamin for not behaving like other people. He himself is surprised as his body morphs, but is always open to new possibilities; his good-natured adaptability gives the social satire a gentle edge. Readers should, of course, look up Fitzgerald's original, but there's much to enjoy in this handsome little hardbound book. Cornell's sepia watercolor panels are especially clever at showing physical and emotional changes as Benjamin moves backward through life while America rolls forward for 70 years. A useful, gracefully written afterword by Donald G. Sheehy, professor of English, completes the volume nicely.
