"Fitzgerald’s famous short story... is a work of magical realism... The principle is simple... an old man and “grew up” in reverse... It’s a wonderful idea, rife with comic potential and also allegorical possibility. ...[T]he story succeeds with a sense of gentle satire and no need for much in the way of flash. ...The tale is most touching at its end, where it even triggers an element of longing in the reader. ...Benjamin ...loses his memories in the way one sponges away the writing on a blackboard; it’s as if the life he lived hasn’t happened. ...The flippancy of Fitzgerald’s style maintains an emotional distance ...that treats the absurd and uncanny as plausible. ...Fitzgerald ...seems mainly interested in the reversal of the natural order and... in finding a way to thematize time’s relativity in a linear narrative. Oddly, “Benjamin Button” seems both of its time and ahead of it."
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Original Language: English
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, "Story Playlist 7: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", New Haven Review (August 8, 2013)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Curious_Case_of_Benjamin_Button_(short_story)
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (short story)
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