The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1921)

Most people have no idea the movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett is based on a short story by Fitzgerald.

I sure didn't until I saw the fact mentioned in passing somewhere.

Anyhow, I bought the bound story from Amazon ($5.95) and read it with much enjoyment (I'm waiting for the movie on Blu-ray).

I put "benjamin button fitzgerald story" into Google and lo and behold, the very first result of 723,000 is a link to the story in its entirety, free for the reading and/or printing out.

Why pay more?

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Author's Preface

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 scarely 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 short 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.