The Confessions of Max Tivoli
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Like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"?
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Claire
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rated it 3 stars
Dec 23, 2008 03:32PM
I read Max Tivoli this summer, and now I'm starting to see all the previews for the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (the new film starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt). I am intrigued to see this film, but I feel as if I've already read part of the plot - even though it is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, not Max Tivoli. What do you all think? I'm beginning to feel as if Andrew Sean Greer too might have ripped off a little bit of Mr. Fitzgerald's work with this backwards-aging business.
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I just finished this and wondered the exact same thing! Seems like Greer must have taken the concept straight from Fitzgerald. I have not read Benjamin Button yet, but am more curious to do so now that I've read this one. I read your review and felt pretty much exactly the same about the book, except you were a bit more generous in your rating than I was. :)
I'm very intrigued to read the Fitzgerald short story, although I'll probably just end up seeing the movie instead. I'm not sure what to think! I'm very curious, though. Laurel, I think the reason I gave the book 3 stars mostly was because I did enjoy the pacing of the book, and I don't think I ever wished for it to just be over and done with. I really think the book had a lot of potential - but I do agree with you on the dislike of the characters (I just read your review, too :) Greer could have made Max Tivoli a more likable character if he was going to take us through his entire life.
I listened to the audio version and wonder if that played a role at all in my general dislike of the book. His narration was really slow (often pausing between and sometimes in the middle of sentences), so maybe that's partly why I kept wanting it to be done already. :)Anyway, I found the following from a NY Times article, if interested:
"Greer is candid about the precedents: F. Scott Fitzgerald told a related story in ''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,'' and that in turn was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. Later Fitzgerald found ''an almost identical plot'' in Samuel Butler's ''Note-books.'' In ''The Sword and the Stone,'' which Mr. Greer read as a child, Merlin ages backward. Mr. Greer carries it further back, to Greek mythology, and forward to ''Mork & Mindy,'' in which Jonathan Winters played a baby. And at one book signing, he said, a reader asked him if he knew about the ''Star Trek'' episode in which....
Actually, when he began the book he was thinking more of Bob Dylan. In 2001, having published a collection of stories and in the middle of writing a novel, he found himself singing ''My Back Pages'' -- ''I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'' -- and he had what amounted to an epiphany. ''I thought that could be a book not like anything I'd written before,'' he said. ''It sounded like a wild adventure that no one's going to want to read, but it could be a lot of fun, and maybe that's the point of it.'' :
Here's the link:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage...
There's also a discussion at:
http://www.babygotbooks.com/2008/10/0...
Anyway, hope you have a nice Christmas! :)
That's fascinating - thanks so much for sharing those links! Ok, I'll ease up on Greer, then. This is good to know. Happy Christmas to you too!
i read the book The curious case of benjamin button and I love the plot. When I saw the movie trailer I was disappointed....they are not the same with the book except the aging backwards.
Ok...a couple of things here...I just finished the Fitzgerald short story and it pretty much has about .000000000000001% in common with the film. I mean, really the very basic premise about aging backwards is the same but *nothing else* is. The short story really pales in comparison imo. Secondly, in the case of the film vs. The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer, first you have to realize that Greer's book preceded the film. Second, if you look at how much he made out of that basic premise, the initial idea may be the same but it's still a creative well worth reading book about much different things.
It's safe to say that there are also some similarities between The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Here are some major differences (spoilers included)
-In the book, the main character, aging backwards, falls in love with a young girl but throughout the book, this love isn't quite requited in the same was as in the film. In addition, the love of his life has no idea what is happening to him and that he is the same person she knew so long ago.
-The the book, the main character aging backwards is taken care of at the end of his life by the woman he loves and their son (vs. daughter) but his son also doesn't know he is his father and he has to witness the woman he loves with another man.
-The film really delves into race in an interesting way. You get the sense that even though it took place in the past, Benjamin is raised to feel that all people are equal and loves the mother who raises him even though she isn't white. The book Confessions of Max Tivoli does raise an interesting question about homosexuality though it happens near the end and isn't a prevaling issue...just a heartbreaking sort of confession of a lifelong friend of Max's.
I found The Confessions of Max Tivoli much more heartbreaking, to say the least.
Claire wrote: "I read Max Tivoli this summer, and now I'm starting to see all the previews for the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (the new film starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt). I am intrigued ..."Claire wrote: "I read Max Tivoli this summer, and now I'm starting to see all the previews for the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (the new film starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt). I am intrigued ..."
I like yourself read Max with my book club when it first came out and I'm also getting a little suspious with the Curious Case of Ben Buttons....I will see the movie it seems to be getting good reviews...where is Oprah going to go with this one?
Yes! I just watched the movie last night and was floored by how sooooo similar they were. Not just the basic aging-backward thing but the settings and the bittersweet love story and just the overall tones of the two were incredibly similar (felt that way to me anyway). Not obvious-plagarism-similar but eerily reminicient. I am obsessed with the book, it's one of my all-times favorites, and I have to say I really loved the movie too. I googled it, and it looks like there have been several works in literature with this aging backward setup, so I don't necessarily think they ripped off Greer, but I'm not totally convinced they didn't either : )
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is actually based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (not Max Tivoli). Fitzgerald wrote this story decades before Greer's book. So if anything, it seems Greer got some ideas off of Fitzgerald, not the other way around (though Greer says he came up with the book from a Bob Dylan song).
Laurel wrote: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is actually based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (NOT Max Tivoli). Fitzgerald wrote this story decades before Greer's book. So if anything, Greer got so..."Yeah, I had read that NYT article too. The thing about it is, Greer was very straightforward about the fact that the aging-backward plot devise wasn't something he invented, that there had been several works in literature through the ages (and elsewhere too, such as the song that was supposedly his inspiration) where the idea had previously surfaced. There's really no new ideas under the sun, so the use of the aging-backward gimmick in inself, by either the movie or the novel, is no biggie to me--it's been done before in several incarnations. What I thought was striking about it, though, was the the similarity between the BB movie and the Greer book above and beyond the basic set-up; early 20th century settings that cover the lifespan of the character, with the focus on major current events of their times, the really gorgeous, lyrical portrayal of romantic, evocotive cities (New Orleans vs. San Francisco), the intersection of the character with this great love of his life over 3 distinct time periods (he's old, she young/they're the same age/he's young, she's old) and how their relationship developed during those 3 periods...really just the overall tone and feel of the 2 works. What I think is so interesting about this is that supposedly, the BB story (which I haven't read yet) and the BB movie are NOT all that similar, beyond the basic aging-backward plot--as Kirstie was saying above. I really need to read the Fitzgerald story, obviously, to be able to speak to if this is really the case, but I have heard it has a satirical tone, totally different than the the kind of wistful, bittersweet romanticism that the movie shares with Max Tivoli. So that was really the part I thought was interesting about all this--the fact that the BB movie was supposedly based on the BB story, but while those two are supposedly very different (again, going by what I've heard), it really is quite similar, in ways beyond the basic idea, to a supposedly completely unrelated novel.
Ok, okay, I see what you're saying now! Sorry for the confusion. I should have read your post more carefully.
I did read both, saw the film, and I posted a really thorough comment. :(
Kirstie wrote: "I did read both, saw the film, and I posted a really thorough comment. :("Yeah, Kirstie, I enjoyed reading your thoughts about it. I definitely agree that there are some substansive differences between the movie and the Greer book like the ones you mentioned, the main one being that the love interest in the book didn't know about his condition--that's fairly major, obviously. I'm definitely not trying to say they're so alike as in the movie people must have ripped off Greer's material or anything like that, but I was just really struck by the similarities and wondered if others felt it too. Like you said, the fact that both had the same basic premise it not that big a deal (even when the premise is so distinctive as this one)--ideas are a dime a dozen, it's how the author tells the story and makes a premise his own that is the issue. So it's not so much in the aging-backwards thing that struck me, but the overall tone and feel of the two. To me, they are just remarkably similar (although like you said, I found the novel to be a bit heavier to the "bitter" of the bittersweet equation than the movie). I'm anxious to read the Fitzgerald story now to get the complete picture, and see how the tone of it compares. At any rate, I just hope the similarities to the Greer book will cause more people to seek it out and read it, because in my opinion, the book didn't get as wide a readership as it should have--to me, it appeals in a Time Travelers Wife kind of way, and that book was much more popular. Thanks for the discussion--as soon as I saw the movie I could hardly wait to see if there were others whose were struck by the comparison between the two.
Now, I haven't read The Time Traveler's Wife but that has come up quite a bit in the last few discussions I have had with other friends who have read it..
Seems to me after seeing "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" that the screenwriters merged F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story and Greer's "Confessions of Max Tivoli"; took the best from each. Take a look at Greer's webpage and he confirms that he was approached in 2004, but declined their offer. Also read "Time Traveler's Wife"; loved that novel also. All three share similarities, but should all be judged on their own.
Nancy your so smart....i agree with everything you just said....I did not read F. Scott but with everything I have researched I'm in total agreement.Good Job.
I'm currently reading Max Tivoli, and yes it did remind me about the Benjamin Button movie. I don't really care if the story was based on each other, the setting and plot might be similar but then again, there are a lot of people who think of the same thing, maybe even at the same time and think they're the first ones to do it. And if one of them gets published first/shown first, the people would then say the latter ripped off the former. All in all I'm enjoying Max Tivoli, very heart-wrenching and poignant. And I'm not yet in the middle of the book, so I think that says a lot, I just hope this story ends beautifully. Not that I'm looking for a happy ending, I just want the story to finish just like I'm about to say goodbye to an old friend, or something like that. Haha
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