The Princess Bride: William Goldman (S. Morgenstern)

Many of us remember the star-studded 1987 film The Princess Bride with fond memories; the retelling of the childhood experience of the author as a boy (played by a young Fred Savage) with pneumonia, being read to by his grandfather( played by Peter Faulk), with the story being broken into occasionally by the boy telling his grandfather he is reading the story wrong because it isn’t following proper fantasy story plot rules.

  I recently came across the 1973 publication of the story and because of my fond memories decided I would not be a proper nerd if I didn’t read The Princess Bride when it crossed my path.  

                Written by William Goldman under the premise of an abridgement of the much earlier S. Morgenstern version that was read to Goldman as a child, the book is predictably different from the film, knowing what Hollywood string-pullers do to original text on a regular basis, but enough of the story was the same to give the reader a similar experience of enjoyment and nostalgia. The book is much more detailed, of course, with reflections on the author’s life leading to the desire to abridge the S. Morgenstern version of The Princess Bride to reflect the way his father (film/book difference) read it to him as a child after having realized his father skipped all of the ‘boring parts’, mostly about Florinese politics, countless pages of royal ceremony, packing and other brain-numbing details. The author’s voice is present at points of 'abridgment' where Goldman tells the reader why he chose to cut something, and what it was he was cutting. The truth is there was no S. Morgenstern, that every stroke of type in “The Princess Bride” from cover to cover is the fictional creation of the crafty, witty, and tricksy {ask Golem (Lord of the Rings), tricksy is a word} William Goldman. What a Hoot!

It was every bit as enjoyable to read as it was to watch the climbing of the Cliffs of Insanity, the epic sword battle of the Dread Pirate Roberts and the fencing Wizard Inigo Montoya, the fire-swamp-dwelling R.O.U.S., the pain-obsessed six-fingered Count, "to the pain!", "As you wish", the Brute Squad, and the unforgettable wit crossing between our heroic Pirate and the plotting Sicilian, Vizzini.

 I now love the book more than the movie, as long as I can keep Mandy Patinkin in mind when I read the line, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”