'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

It's far more likely you've seen the excellent 2008 film starring Brad Pitt than that you've read F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 story which formed the basis for the movie.

Now you can remedy that.

Free, the way we like it.

Below, Fitzgerald'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 scarcely 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.