I wanted to buy this, but was too disturbed by the cover; when you see it in the store, it doesn't even look like Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn!
Many blog readers have probably seen the movie THE PRINCESS BRIDE, where screenwriter William Goldman uses the framing device of a young kid (played by Fred Savage, a.k.a. THE WONDER YEARS’s Kevin Arnold) being read to by his grandfather, with all appropriate dubiousness about the book’s romantic elements.
Fewer have probably read the book that came first, also by Goldman. Starting in third grade, I read it over and over for many years (much as I had obsessively watched the movie from a younger age, until my mother taped over part of it with the six o’clock news, and no I am not still bitter, but only just barely).
Here, Goldman uses a different framing device: he presents the book as being culled from an old academic history, inserting editorial notes into the text where he has removed “a two hundred page digression on the history of the Florish crown” and similar.
The embarassing part: I did not get that this was all Goldman’s invention, at all. I was in high school when I was earnestly explaining to my friend Seth what a great book this is and how Goldman had really improved it from the original by deleting all this boring stuff, when he — entirely from my description — said, “But you know he made all that up, right?”
I just looked at him.
The really embarassing part is that if he hadn’t said that, I sincerely don’t know how long it would have taken me. Would I have a vague sense, to this day, that the history of Florin and its royal intrigues is something I really ought to know more about? We’ll never know.
-->Feed me text
March 31, 2009 at 12:32 pm
um, I read the book for the first time in high school (actually, I think on your recommendation, Elizabeth), and I still thought the academic history stuff was real, although I had just enough doubts to keep that belief to myself, thus avoiding public embarassment. I remained unsure until you told me this story sometime later in high school, but I don’t remember if I fessed up at the time to having been just as gullible.
Also, on a separate note, the book version of THE PRINCESS BRIDE makes one of the best uses of lists ever in a novel.
March 31, 2009 at 12:40 pm
SO TRUE about the lists! I was thinking about posting about this later in the week.
I am so glad not to be alone in my gullibility. It’s kind of pathetic that I am so credulous, since I’m also so regularly fascetious; many people never know whether I’m serious (although if they have any cause to doubt, the answer’s always no), and yet I always fall for other people’s fascetiousness. My parents have made much unfortunately use of this over the years, to their great amusement.
March 31, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Actually, I haven’t read the book myself but I know I’ve read tons of msg board posts where people say things like, “I love the PB, wish I knew the real source material” and others are like, “Uh, you know he made it all up, right?” and they’re like, “Well…yeah…I knew that…I did.” So fear not, you are not alone!
March 31, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Wow, yeah. I read the book for the first time just out of high school and if I had been only a very little younger, I’m sure the same thing would have happened to me.
April 1, 2009 at 12:07 am
Thanks for being so supportive of my ignorance and gullibility, y’all!
April 1, 2009 at 1:41 pm
This blog’s great!! Thanks
.
April 1, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I think I read the book in college, and I may have gone as far as to look up S. Morgenstern and see if he’d written other things, just in case. So I didn’t have to embarrass myself publicly. I really ought to reread that- I thought the book was much funnier than the movie (which everyone raved about in high school, and I merely enjoyed).
April 6, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Really happy that you’re posting about The Princess Bride. That’s one of my favorite books, and I had no idea it wasn’t a movie until I got to college.
I was also pretty confused about the S. Morgenstern stuff. God I love William Goldman.
Ben
http://www.benjaminesch.com
April 6, 2009 at 10:42 pm
It says something bad about me that I am so pleased to learn that everyone else is as easily confused as I am.
April 13, 2009 at 10:52 am
You really weren’t alone in that – I just think my friends were too polite to tell me how wrong I was. And I still begrudge my brother for taping over part of ‘The Diviners’ with a home made movie that he and his friends were making. Sonja Smits in ‘The Diviners’ ruined by his friend pretending to be a sea captain. Not cool.
August 3, 2011 at 4:19 pm
S. Morgenstern was a bigger disappointment for me than Santa.
There is a scene in the book, when Wesley and Buttercup are reunited after falling down a hill to the fire swamp, where Goldman skips over their ecstatic dialogue and says, essentially, “This is boring and besides, it’s a private moment, leave them alone.” He notes, though, that truly curious readers can send away to the publisher for the “omitted” passage if they want. Did you/any other readers ever do that? I did, and I got my excerpt (sort of), and it was awesome. This was at least ten years ago, but I bet it still works.
August 3, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Wait, you DID?! This is changing my life, here.
August 11, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Yes. The paper that came in the mail continued the hoax, blaming legal problems with the Morgenstern estate for the fact that there was no actual excerpt. It also referenced a newly discovered Morgenstern manuscript, “Buttercup’s Baby.” I’ll see if I can dig it up when I visit my parents’ bookshelves in a few weeks.
August 11, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Don’t feel too bad, I was also in high school and reacted exactly the same way.