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Final thoughts on Benjamin Button

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Thanks for joining us for our discussion of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It takes about an hour to read and can be found online here at Project Gutenberg (with the rest of ‘Tales of the Jazz Age’) and here on its own. The film adaptation, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, opened Dec. 25. Our last thoughts:

John Fox, who, in addition to blogging at Bookfox, has a master In professional writing from USC and a master’s in literary theory from NYU, says:

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Even though the story ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ didn’t impress me, I’m glad to have read it. It gave me another reference point in interpreting Gatsby, and led me to other stories in ‘Tales from the Jazz Age’ which are even better. Plus, now I can offer pretentious small-talk at parties about how the film actually came from a Fitzgerald story. In this town of L.A., where everyone assumes ‘screenwriter’ when I say writer, I need all the literary plugs I can get.

Shaft, a blogger at Baby Got Books, adds:

I told myself (and you) that I wouldn’t do this, but I can’t help myself. The world has been done a disservice that Hollywood has made a big-budget film ‘loosely based’ on Fitzgerald’s short story. ‘The Confessions of Max Tivoli’ is such a better use of a similar (but importantly different) premise, and now will be either unknown or thought of as a knock-off (which it isn’t).

Amy Shearn earned her MFA at the University of Minnesota and wrote ‘How Far is the Ocean From Here.’ She blogs at Moonlight Ambulette and has a different take:

Thanks again for inviting me to take part! It was fun. I can’t wait to see the movie....

Thanks to all of them for taking part and to you for reading. Me, I’m going to see the movie too.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

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