| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9781439117002 | | Publisher: Scribner Book Company | | Publish Date: 12/1/2008 | | Buy.com Sku: 209294728 | | Item#: | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 68300 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 9.25H x 6L x 0.75T | | Pages: 176 |
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| | | | F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the great voices in the history of American literature, is best known today for his novels, but during his lifetime his fame stemmed primarily from his prolific achievements as one of America's most gifted short story writers. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of his most memorable creations.
"I was born under unusual circumstances." And so begins the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man whois born in his eighties and ages backwards. A man, like any of us, unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the twenty-first century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be. Directed by David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a time traveler's tale of the people and places Benjamin Button bumps into along the way, the loves he loses and finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
Included in this volume is F. Scott Fitzgerald's provocative story, as well as Eric Roth's stunning screenplay, a bold re-imagining of this classic tale.
Annotation:
In "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great chronicler of the Jazz Age, tells the tale of a baby born as an old man. Fitzgerald follows Benjamin Button as he ages in reverse, growing younger year by year, and in the process Fitzgerald offers his own curious portrayal of turn-of-the century America. In this story, as in all his fiction, Fitzgerald's perspective on his times is never simple. He boldly depicts the successes and failures of his generation, loading his stories with tragedy, cynicism, and tenderness. This volume includes Fitzgerald's provocative story, along with Eric Roth's screenplay adaptation, which shifts the location to New Orleans and the dates forward by about 50 years. Roth's version was directed by David Fincher in a 2008 release starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
| Author Bio| F. Scott Fitzgerald | | Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended prep school, then Princeton University. ("I was always the poorest boy at a rich man's school," he claimed.) He was a lackluster student; when he dropped out to enlist in the army during World War I, he was on academic probation. The armistice was signed before Fitzgerald could see service, and he was discharged in 1919. He began writing THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, based on his Princeton years, when he was 21, and was 24 when it was published. The success of the novel--which was called by Edmund Wilson "one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published"--enabled him to marry Zelda Sayre, whose family disapproved of him and his prospects. Fitzgerald gained growing celebrity as a major new voice in American fiction, and he and Zelda became the 1920s' equivalent of jet-setters, dividing their time between New York, Paris, and the Riviera--part of the circle of American expatriates that included Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Dos Passos, writers about whom Stein coined the term "the lost generation." Fitzgerald continued to write all his life, including the obligatory stint in Hollywood, but was gradually taken over by alcoholism and the general dissolution of his life, and many of his later years were plagued by doubt, debt, and failure. He died at the absurdly young age of 44, of a heart attack. |
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