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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories by Fitzgerald

Wed, 12/17/2008

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The official release date for the film adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is Christmas day, but it's already garnered five Golden Globe nominations, including Brad Pitt for Best Actor in a Drama and David Fincher for Best Director. And the film itself is up for Best Drama. That's an incredible stamp of approval for a film that hasn't even hasn't even hit theaters yet, and it will no doubt bring a lot of people into the theaters during the holiday season, as if Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett weren't reason enough.

Before you figure out how to fit the film into your holiday schedule, I recommend picking up a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories. The title story, and the obvious inspiration for the film, is something of a departure for Fitzgerald, whose stories and novels usually present readers with cutting portraits of upper-middle class society. While Benjamin Button certainly lives in just such a circle of educated, worldly professionals, Fitzgerald employs a conceit that has no analogue in the rest of his writing: the main character is born in 1860 as an old man, and ages backwards. In less talented hands, this sci-fi treatment could have proven disastrous, but Fitzgerald crafted a story that deftly comments on the strange disappointment of being born into "a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

Also included in the collection are some of Fitzgerald's best stories. "The Ice Palace" portrays a Midwest adolescence similar to the author's own, and includes a simple and yet moving line that has stuck with me since I first read it in college: "The wind blew cold as misery." Another story, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," highlights a theme that Fitzgerald would explore in almost every novel: the flirtation between the rich and those who aspire to be rich. But even if you're only interested in the one story, you'll want to have the book for its wonderful new cover, illustrated by our own Jennifer Wang.

Posted by: Tom Roberge, Penguin Publishing Manager