Description

In 1860, a very strange event took place: Benjamin Button was born. While a baby’s birth may not seem like anything out of the ordinary, Benjamin’s was indeed remarkable, for he was born an old man. Complete with a long beard and white hair, the infant Benjamin is already talking with his father on the day he makes his debut in the world. Realizing that he is actually aging in reverse, Benjamin relies on dyeing his hair and shaving his beard during his childhood and youth to try and appear at least close to his biological age. No matter how well he might hide his secret, however, Benjamin knows that life will always be very different for him. As he grows older (and younger), he meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman, Hildegarde, who happens to be attracted to older men. Benjamin and Hildegarde marry and are happy—but only for a time. As Hildegarde grows older, Benjamin’s increasingly young heart yearns for freedom. Will this very strange man ever be able to find happiness even as he goes through life backwards? An odd and intriguing fable, this 1922 tale is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most unusual and memorable.

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was born into a privileged family in St. Paul, Minnesota. Early on, the young Fitzgerald tried his hand at writing and saw his work appear in the school paper. Although not a stellar student, the young man attended Princeton University. While at college Fitzgerald began writing parts of what would become one of his most important works, This Side of Paradise. In 1917 the United States became involved in the First World War and Fitzgerald decided to join up and serve his country. He found himself at boot camp in Alabama, where he met the woman—Zelda Sayre—who would become his wife and closest companion in the wild and exciting decade to come. After the war's end, Fitzgerald went to work for a New York advertising agency and finally published his first novel. He and Sayre were married and throughout the 1920s they were one of the Jazz Age's most trend-setting couples, living a life of excess and fun in the spotlight. Fitzgerald and Sayre spent considerable time in Europe, where they moved in some of the most notable circles of the "Lost Generation," a community of artistic expatriates who lived and worked in the exciting world abroad. The decadent lifestyle that Zelda and Fitzgerald led would eventually bring a shadow of instability and destruction in its wake. Although he died at an early age, Fitzgerald's novels, such as The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and Damned record a definitive moment in American culture, when new freedoms allowed a fleeting plunge into a world of inspiration and glamour.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

1.
As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anaesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty ...