The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Graphic novel version by Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir; Illustrated by Kevin Cornell

When Fitzgerald penned Benjamin Button in 1922, he enthusiastically called it “the funniest story ever written” and hoped to write more pieces like it and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Publishers and the public, however, had a different idea as evidenced by an anonymous letter by a reader 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 (sic) 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.

I had a somewhat more favorable reaction to the story of the unfortunate Mr. Button, who was born an old man and grew younger rather than older.

I was unable to find a copy of the full text of Fitzgerald’s story, but the graphic novel edition purports to be “complete with Fitzgerald’s original text”. I suspect that the text included was indeed the author’s but I’m not convinced that it was the full text of the story since Fitzgerald tended to be wordy. Nonetheless, there was more than enough, along with the illustrations and the speech bubbles, to tell the story in detail.

The 2008 movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett was a tour de force of digital enhancement. It won Academy Awards for Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects, as well it should have. (Rent DVDs online with Zip.ca or Blockbuster.com )

Critics were divided, some (NY Times, Variety) seeing it as a wonderful film and others, not so. I’m on the side of the Times.

Generally, I like movies that are based on books to stick fairly closely to the original. In this case, I’m willing to make an exception. Other than the title and the general concept of a man “aging” younger, there are NO similarities between Fitzgerald’s story (hereafter called the “book”) and the film.

In the book, Benjamin was born in a Baltimore hospital in 1860, as fully grown adult–a seventy-year-old man–who can talk & thinks like an adult. He’s raised by his father, spending company in his early days with his elderly grandfather. When he is in his early twenties, and appears about fifty, he marries a younger woman who likes “older men”. As the years pass, Benjamin loses interest in his wife as she becomes middle-aged and he grows younger.

His troubles applying to Yale (at 18 but looking 60), his time in the army during the Spanish-American War that began in 1898, his subsequent years as a football hero at Harvard (at 60 but looking 18), and his attempt at re-enlistment in 1914 for the Great War are wryly comically portrayed by Fitzgerald.

As the years progress, Benjamin hands over the family Wholesale Hardware business to his son Roscoe, and as an moody adolescent ends up living with Roscoe and eventually attends kindergarten with his grandson as he thinks more and more like a child.

The movie has Benjamin being born in 1918 in New Orleans as a wizened baby who is literally thrown away by his father and lands on the steps of an old-age home where he is taken in by one of the attendants and raised as her own.

The old age home is a clever device – who would question an old man there, even if he acted like a three year old, which he did, since the movie version has Benjamin born as a child physically and mentally. That works until dementia sets in when he looks about 12 years old. Then the script picks up the book’s version of his regressing intellect & knowledge.

The love story that is central to the movie version is completely an invention of the screenwriter, and is completely opposite to what happens in the book.

And the movie version made the elder Mr. Button’s fortune the result of buttons, rather than hardware. You decide if that clever or if it’s cheesy. I rather liked it. After all, the whole story is a fantasy.

Differences aside, I greatly enjoyed the movie and much of my enjoyment came from the period sets throughout the twentieth century. Some critics make the charge that the movie is too long, coming in at just under three hours, but I think that it needs that time to progress through the decades and to tell Benjamin’s story: a man who seemed not greatly affected by major history (other than the World Wars) and who just seemed to have life happen to him, rather than to make life happen.

Brad Pitt played Brad Pitt – in various make-ups and with a multitude of digital enhancement, both to look young and to look old. Cate Blanchett, also the recipient of age-altering techniques, was far more credible as Daisy (a tip of the hat to Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby name for his wife Zelda).

Although I was initially disappointed that I was able to get only this graphic issue of the story, I found the book to be a pleasure to read (and to re-read). It, no doubt, is true to the original story and makes it accessible to both younger and older readers alike.

The book reminded me of the Illustrated Classics of such books as the Prince and the Pauper that my brother & I devoured in the mid-sixties. But they were comic books. This is an elegant, 5.75 x 8.25 inch hardbound edition whose sepia toned pages are a treat to read.

My copy is overdue from my local library.

Benjamin Button satisfies three of my reading challenges: the Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button And Other Jazz Age Tales

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

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