Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
This wonderfull story from Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age was recently revived in a lovely movie of the same name, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchet.
Download free PDF or DJVU book.
From preface to the original edition:
This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain’s to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler’s “Note-books.”
The story was published in “Collier’s” last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati:
“Sir—
I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers and I wish to say
that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic I have seen
many peices of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of
stationary on you but I will.”
