Max Tivoli & Benjamin Button

Davina, BookBrowse editor

A couple of people have emailed recently to ask whether The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on, or at least inspired by, Andrew Sean Greer's 2004 novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and if so, why the movie title was changed?

The confusion is understandable, both The Confessions of Max Tivoli and the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tell the story of a man who ages backwards and both are set in the same broad time period, but the one is not based on the other. In fact, the movie is adapted from a short story of the same name written by F Scott Fitzgerald in 1921, which was first published in book form in Tales of the Jazz Age, a 1922 collection of eleven short stories that included The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

In the opening pages of Tales of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald explains that "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" " 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."

The full text of Fitzgerald's story is available in a number of places online, including here.