F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which forms the basis for the new David Fincher movie starring Brad Pitt, originally appeared in Collier’s on May 27, 1922 (earlier the story had been rejected by Metropolitan), and was then featured in Fitzgerald’s second story collection, “Tales of the Jazz Age.” Fitzgerald was, at the time, the most famous young writer in America, thanks to the smash success of his first novel, “This Side of Paradise,” published in 1920. He’d become the voice of the youthful and disillusioned post- World War I generation, of the exuberant and half-decadent Jazz Age. He wrote with his finger on the pulse of popular culture and with an eye to the nation’s swiftly changing mores. A typical Fitzgerald story of this period would be “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” combining bored youth, quick repartee and rivalry among girls thinking of sex with the kind of effortless grace and eloquence that were already his trademarks.
more from the LA Times here.