Act Your Age

You would think reading a book under 100 pages would be easy. Well, the reading was easy, but the finding was harder. I finally turned to the NYPL blog for suggestions. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button comes in at 52 pages. 

Mr. Button realizes something might be amiss with his newborn when he encounters one horrified look after the other as he makes his way to the nursery.  When he sets eyes on his firstborn, he discovers not a squalling infant but a puzzled old man of 70. They bring Benjamin home and find instead of weaning him from bottles, they must wean him from cigars. As Benjamin grows older, his visage grows younger. At 20, as he appears to be a distinguished man of 50. He begins working for his father’s hardware company and marries a young woman. However, as his wife Hildegarde ages, Benjamin himself grows younger and soon finds her wrinkles displeasing. Hildegarde moves away, leaving their son to look after his father. Soon Benjamin is young enough to be playmates with his own grandchild. And as he passes into infancy, he remembers nothing of his life, but only perceives the comforting presence of his nurse.

Fitzgerald pokes fun at the social mores of the day. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m curious whether the tongue-in-cheek tone of the book was captured on screen. First Benjamin is discriminated against for looking too old for college, and then he looks too young for the military service.  As he grows younger and more energetic, he finds fault with his wife for acting her age. She, in turn, accuses him of being stubborn and not wanting to “be like any one else.” His son also finds fault in his father’s “refusing to look sixty.” They seem to think age is merely a state of mind. However in Benjamin’s case, it is only a state of body.