Benjamin Button

Plotting the movie gave me a great excuse to sit down and watch The Curious Case of Brad Pitt, I mean Benjamin Button, on TV. Of course, I would never watch a movie just to drool over Brad Pitt. Except for maybe Meet Joe Black and... well never mind. Somehow the first time around I missed that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button started as an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. So I stopped by the library for a book of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories so I could read it. Loved the movie, but when they said "based on" or "inspired by", can't remember which, they got that right.

The story is much better, it's very quirky, modern, very modern. Hard to believe it was written in the 1920s. How did I also miss that F. Scott Fitzgerald was so ahead of his time and truly is the great American story teller. He makes no apologies, gives no explanations, just, here's a really odd thought taken all the way to completion perfectly. Want to gobble up the whole book, but probably won't have time. Homework for the Author-Mentor workshop on everything from writing a good pitch to having a good twist at the end, and everything in between. Rigorous, but exhilarating.

I'm feeling a bit like Benjamin Button myself these days with all the excitement and tenacity of youth, and none of the disillusionment Fitzgerald wrote about in Gatsby, and perhaps I should be feeling given my age. Maybe that's what Fitzgerald meant by writing a story of a life lived backwards. Age can either lead to disillusionment or can give one a certain cavalier approach to tackling what might previously have been a daunting task. You have to ask yourself the question, "If not now, when?" Then, go for it with the gusto that comes with the certain knowledge that life is short.

And life was short for Fitzgerald. Just forty-four years. Very focussed though. Knew what he was made for and did it. With gusto.

More later.