Reversibles

Two backward tales:

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," now a David Fincher movie (starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett):

Benjamin, as he says in his voice-over narration, “was born under unusual circumstances” on Nov. 11, 1918, the last day of World War I. As the doctor attending him describes the strange little creature, “He has all the deterioration, the infirmities, not of a newborn, but of a man well in his 80s on the way to his grave.” —NYT

(The FSF original begins around the time of the Civil War.)

2. Frigyes Karinthy's "The Moral," from Soliloquies in the Bath:

Ten years later my hair began to turn black and my teeth gradually returned to my mouth. I was deprived of my pension and had to sit at the office doing my work from the end right to the beginning. My employers were very kind to me, but after twenty-five years they ceased to know me and engaged me on trial at fifteen pounds a month. So there I stood, back to front of course, without money and without a job, but with a wife who grew prettier and loved me more every day.

(Via A Journey Round My Skull)